Candlelight
by HappyLeifEricsonDay
Summary: Sam's only friend is the ever-loyal Tucker, ever since Danny began slowly distancing himself from them after some accident freshman year. She wanted a friend, but she never thought she'd find the one she was looking for in the highly debated ghostly hero of Amity Park.
1. Chapter 1

Hey friends! I know this has been done but I wanted to take a (hopefully) fresh and different crack at it.

AU where Danny was alone when the portal accident happened. You can assume pretty much everything in canon has already happened besides PP, except Danny went through the events alone.

Review and let me know what you think, if you're interested in the story so far, yada yada. You know the deal.

* * *

**Chapter One**

x - x - x

Muted rays of light sifted through the crimson drapes covering the front windows and motes of dust swirled endlessly there, like little fireflies trapped in the beams. Sam reached down once more into the box balanced between her hip and the top rung of the ladder, placing the last latest edition of _The Necronomicon_ in its place on the highest shelf.

The bell chimed, and Sam turned instinctively. But the front door was blocked by the shelves from this viewpoint, so she couldn't see the customer that stepped inside. "Welcome to Skulk and Lurk!" she called as cheerily as she could manage in her current mood. She was exhausted and wanted her shift to be over already. It was the first night she'd been scheduled to work alone though, so she wanted to be on her best behavior to prove she could be trusted.

No one answered.

Descending the ladder quickly, passing rows of candles and jewelry and books and assorted twisted figurines, she rounded the back corner to drop the empty box behind the cashier's desk. From there she peered down the aisle in front of her as the customer came into view. It was the first customer she'd had in an hour and a half. After all it was a Monday night, and it was after eleven. Only a half hour till close. The tall man's back was to her as he leaned in and scanned the titles lined on a mid-level shelf, scratching the back of his neck absently.

"Hey there," Sam offered, forcing herself to be friendly. What she really wanted was to go back to reading the book which was bookmarked on the desk next to her register. "Can I help you with…" her scripted greeting died in her throat as he turned around, one eye brow cocked, his hand still frozen on his neck.

"Sam?" he said, blinking. His eyes flitted back and forth nervously, like she'd caught him in the girl's locker room or something. "You uh… you work here now?"

"Yeah," she answered. "Four weeks now." What in the hell was he doing here?

"That's cool I guess," he said, flashing her a shy smile.

"Let me know if you need anything," she replied frigidly, snapping abruptly back into Customer Service Speak. She picked up her paperback from the desk, gluing her eyes to it. She didn't want to look at his face anymore. But the words swam around meaninglessly, and she read the same paragraph five times without processing a word of it before a small cough brought her back to reality. She glanced over the top of the book and Danny was standing there in front of her desk.

He bit his lip, like he was debating what to say. "I know you haven't worked here long but are you familiar enough with everything to help me find a specific book?"

She contemplated all the icy things she would like to say to him, before carefully squashing them. "What are you looking for?"

"A history of the hauntings in Amity. Any would do, really."

Sam pressed the broken stick of incense she'd been using as a pseudo-bookmark back into the pages, and circled around the desk, not waiting to see if he was following her down to the last aisle. "Nonfiction section," she said, pointing to the paper taped to the side of the shelf.

"Oh... Duh," he said with a chuckle.

Sam paused and crouched down to peer at the line of W authors. Warren… Westfall… Whittaker. "There are lots of different accounts, but I personally think this is the best one. It's got primary sources along with the research. Letters, journal entries, old articles, stuff like that."

He accepted the book and looked at the cover. _A History of the Paranormal in Amity Park by Philip G. Whittaker._ He flipped through, glancing at the varied entries. "This is perfect. Thanks, Sam."

He smiled at her again crookedly, but it didn't reach his tired eyes. She hated that. His smile looked sad and guilty, and he shouldn't _get _to feel like that.

She hadn't stood this close to him in god knew how long. She hadn't realized how much taller he'd gotten, now towering a whole head over her. Though she wasn't surprised, considering the monstrous size of Jack. His shoulders were broader than she remembered, his jaw more defined. Bags under his eyes. Dark dirt smudged almost like smoke on his cheekbone, on the side his neck. His black flyaway hair somehow more wild than ever. It was the same face she knew, the same voice, but the person in front of her was almost a stranger. "I'll just ring you up, then," she said, pushing past him back to the desk. "Unless you need anything else."

"Nope," he replied, following closely. "This is it."

She could feel his eyes on her as she scanned the book and threw it into one of the brown paper bags, the words _Skulk and Lurk _imprinted on the side in gothic black font. "Seventeen fifty," she told him, glancing at the screen of the register.

He dug his wallet out of his back pocket slowly, and sifted through papers and tickets and one dollar bills.

"What do you want that book for anyway?" she said before she could stop herself.

He paused in his search, looking up at her.

"It's just that you never used to come to this store," she said. Not to mention her deep suspicion that he had a pathological fear of ghosts. She definitely wasn't going to mention that.

He scratched his nose, pulled a crumpled twenty from the back of the wallet. "I dunno. Research, and stuff. For my parents," he added quickly.

"Right." Sam pressed the half shredded twenty onto the pile in the drawer, and gave him back his change.

"So.. how's Tucker?" Danny asked, opting to inspect the paper bag on the counter instead of looking at her.

Sam picked up her book, blocking his face from view again. "Why don't you ask him yourself?" she told him coldly. She heard him sigh but didn't look up until the bell chimed at the front door, just to check that he was really leaving. But his eyes met hers and he gave a small wave. "Bye Sam."

And he was gone.

. . . . .

"You wanna tell me what the heck is bothering you?" Tucker asked, setting his PDA down on the gray tabletop.

Sam looked up at him from her salad, which she'd been stabbing at with her fork without really taking any bites. "Nothing's wrong," she assured him.

Tucker folded his arms over his chest. "I've been talking about how this delicious burger is for like five minutes and you haven't said a single accusing statement."

She sighed. "Sorry, Tuck. I guess I'm just kind of out of it." Her gaze fell on the boy leaning against the far wall of the cafeteria, staring into space as he bit into a red apple. The students milling around the cafeteria arched around him as they passed, leaving a wide bubble of space between themselves and him. Sam glowered and stabbed into her salad once more.

Tucker followed her gaze to where Danny stood and then glanced back at Sam questioningly.

Sam rolled her eyes, huffing. "He came into the store last night."

"Oh. Really?"

"Yeah, really. He wanted a book on the history of Amity Park hauntings, can you believe that?"

"That's weird."

"You're telling me."

Tucker and Sam had a running theory (based on a wealth of evidence) that much of the change in Danny had to do with a paralyzing fear of the paranormal. So this was a little confusing, to say the least.

"He's just so different," Sam growled. "But he's still the same! It's infuriating, you know?"

"Did he talk to you?" Tucker asked softly, twirling his PDA around on the table.

"A bit. He had the nerve to ask how you were," she seethed.

"What did you say?"

"I told him to ask you himself." She stuffed a bit of dressing slathered lettuce into her mouth.

"Don't be so angry, Sam," he told her gently. "It's beyond our control, you know."

"Whatever," she snapped. "I'm over it."

Danny was leaving the cafeteria now, backpack slung lazily over one shoulder. The students parted warily as he walked through them.

. . . . .

Saturday night she got on her bike and started pedaling. She loved the way the winded rushed past her, the way the asphalt blurred beneath the tires. She must have ridden through every street in this city a thousand times over.

Her favorite place to ride was in the park though. Living in a city meant she couldn't get the daily dose of nature she craved, not without riding well beyond the city limits into the forest. So the park, littered with grass and trees, squirrels and rabbits and gophers, was the next best thing. Plus they had a kickass bike trail curving through it.

It must have been one in the morning, since she'd gotten home from work after midnight. There was no one in the park, save for one homeless man passed out on a blanket underneath a tall oak tree. Sam leaned her bike against the fountain when she paused to take a drink. She cursed herself for having forgotten the little spider backpack she usually brought which housed a water bottle.

She sputtered and nearly choked when she heard a huge crash behind her, like the paved bike trail had exploded.

She spun around and saw smoke rising, scattered debris, a small crater where a ghost was trying to sit up. It was one she'd seen many times, one of the more frequent attackers of Casper High. Skulker, Phantom called him.

Speaking of Phantom, the ghost flickered into view just as Skulker raised his mechanical left arm, a whining sound as it glowed blue with a pending attack. He raised a transparent shield that easily blocked Skulker's blast.

Sam stood frozen, backed against the stone drinking fountain. She could run, but Skulker was a mere twenty feet from her. She didn't want to draw attention to herself. Neither had noticed her yet. She cursed herself again for forgetting her backpack. Her only defense weapon was in there, a Fenton wrist ray she'd bought when they'd made them commercially available. On more than one occasion it had proved itself useful. Stupid, stupid, stupid! She knew she shouldn't be going out without it, especially during hours of high ghost activity.

Phantom easily dodged two more bright blasts that Skulker sent after him, and then froze his raised arm solid when it began to glow again. "Are we going to do this all night or do you wanna just get in my thermos now so I can get some sleep?" he drawled down lazily at the seething ghost.

"You should have more respect, whelp," Skulker growled as he launched himself sideways out of the way of the beam of blue light that erupted forward from the thermos in Phantom's hands. A Fenton thermos Sam knew, though no one knew how the ghost came by it, or why his was working and none of Jack and Maddie's ever came to full functionality. Phantom never stuck around long enough after his battles to answer questions like that.

"Skulker, I respect you about as much as I respect a rock in my shoe."

"A rock in your – I'm no small annoyance, insolent child. More like your worst nightmare!" Skulker yelled, unleashing wild blasts of light at Phantom, who seemed to dodge them with great ease.

Phantom just laughed, and between dodging he conjured up what looked like a giant ball of pure ice, and hurtled it at his opponent. It caught Skulker off guard, shattering into a thousand pieces on and into his metal chest. There was a strangled cry as the hulking ghost plummeted downward, towards _her, _and Sam lunged sideways wildly, smacking her shoulder and head into the ground with sickening force, and felt the weight of the ghost shake the earth as he smashed the stone fountain.

Her head spun and in her daze she thought _there goes my bike._

"Hey!" She looked around. The grass wavered, a luminous face in front of her out of focus. "Hey, are you okay?" He pulled on her hand and she sat up willingly, shaking away the dizzies. "I didn't see you there," he told her, concern heavy in his voice.

The pile of smoking metal rustled and there was a mangled growl from somewhere within it.

"Hold on a moment," he said, and his hand left her arm. She watched him slam down feet first on what used to be Skulker's chest, dented beyond recognition, small sparks flying where he was impaled with ice. Phantom crouched down and tore Skulker's head from his shoulders without preamble, and Sam shuddered. A tiny voice, much higher in pitch, raged from within the iron head. "You won't get away with this! I'll be back! I always come-" Phantom had pulled the Thermos from where it hung from the white belt at his waist and fired it up. The grating voice turned to a shriek as a tiny green thing was sucked into the tractor beam, and the light died away with the voice.

In an instant Phantom's face loomed in front of her, and he was grabbing for her hand. "I'm so sorry," he breathed. His voice echoed softly, like it was coming in on a bad radio connection. All ghosts sounded something like that. "Did you hit your head? It looked like it…"

She was always taken aback by Phantom's demeanor, even though she knew to expect it. "I… I'm fine," she told him, allowing him to pull her to her feet. "Really," she added, when he continued gazing at her in alarm, unconvinced.

She brushed at the streaks of mud on her black jeans and her arms, hoping to god her parents were asleep when she got home. She didn't want to explain this. Speaking of home… She groaned when her eyes fell on the tangled mess of her bike. Half of it was sticking out from under Skulker's remains, and it was very clearly beyond hope of salvation.

"What?" Phantom asked quickly. "What's wrong?"

"It's just my bike," she groaned. "It's totally trashed!"

Phantom cringed as he spotted it. "God, I'm sorry. This is totally my fault."

Sam rolled her eyes. "It's not your fault. But now I'm stranded a billion miles from my house."

Phantom quirked an eyebrow at her. "I could uh.. I could give you a ride. If you want," he hastily added, looking away.

She had to admit, the idea of a ghost flying her home sounded both terrifying and exhilarating all at once. She found herself saying, "That'd actually be awesome."

He perked up, grinning at her. "Okay. Here, take my hand. It might feel a bit funny at first…" He peered at her as she pressed her hand into his tough white glove. "Are you scared?" he asked.

She scoffed. "Uh no. It's not as if I've never done it... you've saved me a couple times before you know."

He chuckled. "Yeah, I know. This is different than being carried though."

As he said it, a tingling sensation spread from her hand through her arm, settling like frost into her body. Gravity vanished without warning, and her feet bobbed up from the grass. A wave of butterflies shot through her. "Woah," she whispered, and she drifted toward him as he tugged her arm gently upward, like a wayward balloon on a string. "Yeah this is really different. How are you doing this?"

"I can extend my flight to someone as easily as I can make them intangible. Pretty cool, huh?"

"Way cool," she agreed.

Phantom began flying toward the end of the park, with Sam drifting numbly next to him, focusing on the feel of the cool night wind in her hair. What would happen if he were to let her go? She smothered that train of thought immediately. "You probably want directions," she stated.

His head twitched around toward her. "Oh.. yeah. Directions. Show me the way, oh damsel in distress!"

"If you call me that again you can drop me off at the next corner," she said dryly, but the ghost just laughed.

While the bike ride had taken fifteen minutes, the flight home took less than three.

"That's my window there," Sam told him, pointing to the dark glass in the upper right corner of her house. She shuddered involuntarily as a wash of cold overtook her, and they phased directly through the brick wall into her bedroom. The tingling cool feeling lifted abruptly when they touched down on her carpet and Phantom dropped her hand.

"Thanks for the lift," she said genuinely.

"No big deal. I really am sorry about your bike," he muttered, running a hand through his ruffled white hair.

"Eh, whatever. I got my paycheck yesterday so I'll just get a better one. I was planning on it soon anyway."

"That's good I guess. And are you sure you're alright? It looked like you hit your head pretty hard." He chuckled to himself. "Plus, there are leaves in your hair still."

Sam flushed, sifting her hands through her hair and feeling several crunchy leaves snagged in there. "I'm really fine," she assured him. "My head just hurts a bit."

"Alright." He ran his hand through his hair again, almost like he was nervous. "I'll be going, I guess."

"Wait a sec."

He paused, one leg having already stepped through her outer wall.

She let her handful of leaves drift to the floor. "I uh.. I'm Sam," she said, lamely.

He looked at her blankly. His green eyes glowed like neon Vegas lights.

"I just wanted to introduce myself," she continued, not sure why she was still talking at all. She told herself to shut up, but she didn't. "I mean, I've met you a few times before. I know your name, so I thought you should know mine." She felt her cheeks grow red despite herself, feeling exceedingly dumb.

He smiled and floated over, extending his hand. "Well it's nice to meet you for real then, Sam." He cocked his head, peering at her oddly as she shook his hand. "You're really not afraid of me at all, are you?"

"No. Why, should I be?" she joked.

"Nah, it's just that most people are."

"Most people are pretty stupid," she replied honestly, "so I wouldn't take it personally."

"I try not to," he snickered. "You know, you're the first person that's introduced themselves to me like that."

"What can I say? I'm friendly," she said, shrugging.

"A friendly goth?" he said with fake shock. "That's pretty unbelievable."

"So's a friendly ghost," she countered, resting one hand on her hip. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Uh.. depends on the question." He drifted lazily backwards, folding his arms behind his head.

"How come you don't use your hero voice on me?"

He scratched his nose ponderously. "Uh.. hero voice?"

"I see you around all the time you know. Whenever you're talking to citizens you throw on this tough guy voice. 'Don't be afraid, citizen!'" she mocked while wagging her finger, mimicking the way he deepens his tone. "But you don't do that when you're shouting at ghosts, and you've definitely never talked to me like that."

He shrugged. "I dunno. I guess I'm just trying to make them less afraid, by pretending to know what I'm doing."

"You don't bother to use the voice with me," she reminded him.

He simply shrugged again, looking away toward the window. "I have to get going, Sam."

"Where do you go when you're not battling ghosts?"

He peered over his shoulder at her. "What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?" he said dryly. She was about to apologize when he said, "Just around. Around Amity, making sure it's safe."

"Don't you ever get bored of being Amity's guard dog?"

"Like you wouldn't believe," he said, with over-exaggerated grimness.

She laughed. "Well you know, if you ever get super bored you could always visit me. I get bored a lot too." Lonely, bored. What was the difference?

The corners of his mouth twitched downward. "I want to take you up on that, but it's a bad idea."

"Why?"

"I.. I have a lot of enemies. I can't really afford to make friends with people."

"We don't have to be friends," she suggested. "But if you ever wanted to stop by we could be friendly acquaintances."

His frown weakened. "I'll think about it."

"One more question," she added abruptly as he floated toward her wall again. "Earlier when I said you'd saved me before, you said 'I know.' Does that mean you remember me? Saving me, I mean?"

His eyebrows scrunched a bit. "How could I forget something like that?" he said quietly. And before she could reply he had vanished through her wall, and she was alone in the dim room.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

x - x - x

Senior year, Calculus was the only class Sam had with Danny in it. On the days he showed up, anyway. Out of habit Sam usually haunted the back row of every classroom so she could doodle without being reprimanded, but in Calculus she sat in the front. Danny was in the back. This way she could basically pretend he wasn't there, and she was never in danger of getting partnered up with him. Mr. Craft had some sort of obsession with team projects. He had a firm belief that it was easier to learn if you were doing it with a partner. It was beyond annoying.

But today, she was fine with it. Because the irritatingly loquacious drama club girl who usually sat next to her (hence, typical partner) hadn't shown up. So Sam would be allowed to work alone today on the worksheet Mr. Craft was now passing out.

About ten minutes after the bell had rung, she was just reaching problem three when the classroom door opened. Danny Fenton shuffled in, looking rather ruffled, dragging his backpack on the floor behind him.

Mr. Craft cleared his throat. "That's three times this week, Mr. Fenton," he drawled, making a check on the sheet on his desk. "And more times than I can count for the whole semester."

"Sorry, Mr. Craft, it's just that I was-"

He stopped when the teacher raised a hand. "I don't want to hear your excuse. Who doesn't have a partner yet?" he said, turning to the class at large. Sam's eyes flickered across the students, who all hastily turned away or averted their eyes. Nobody wanted to be _Fenton's _partner, she could see in on their faces. People talked about Danny, whispered rumors. People wondered about him, about his strange behavior. They were wary of him. Sam, though, she had stopped caring a long time ago. She had to, for the sake of her own sanity.

She was horrified but not surprised when Mr. Craft's eyes landed on her. "Sam, Danny will be joining you in this worksheet. Would you mind catching him up to speed?"

Her pencil felt like it might snap from how hard she was gripping it, but she said, "Sure, why not?" and didn't know whether she was being sarcastic or not.

Danny sat gingerly in the empty desk next to her. Every other partner had scooted their desks together but Danny remained where he was.

She watched him stare at the paper like it was written in a foreign language. "Is this from the notes we took yesterday?" he said slowly.

"Yeah." Oh right, Danny had skipped class yesterday. Again. …Not that she kept track or anything. "Here, you can look at mine," she said, tossing her composition book onto his desktop.

"Thanks," he breathed, opening to the latest page of scribbles. "Oh I get it. New formula."

He began scribbling into the space below problem one. "Hey is this what you got?" he asked once he was done, disturbing Sam from her work on problem four. She peered over at his mess of numbers and variables, trying to decipher it.

"Uh… no." Not even remotely close. "See, you need to distribute this part first… here take a look at mine."

Danny turned red and began to erase his work. "That… makes a lot more sense," he said sheepishly as he glanced over Sam's answers. He caught up to her quickly, checking his answers against hers. "Thanks for helping me out," he said shyly, keeping his eyes trained on his paper.

She gripped her pencil even harder. Surely it would splinter soon. Why did Danny have to make it so hard to hate him? Sometimes she would catch him looking at her and Tucker as they passed in the halls, she'd catch a slight frown, and defeated hunch in his shoulders. She had to remind herself that it was _him _who abandoned the friendship, and not them. Because the sad way he looked at them made it seem otherwise.

Don't think about it, she commanded herself.

"So, you reading that book?" she said as they paused after problem five, when the silence started getting to her. Everyone else in the class was chattering softly.

He glanced over at her. "Oh uh, yeah. It's pretty interesting stuff."

She wouldn't have thought Danny would choose the word 'interesting' to describe ghosts. Not the Danny who ran and hid the moment they showed up, who back in freshman year used to pale whenever his parents mentioned them. She frowned at her paper, trying to convince herself she wasn't still desperately wishing she knew what was wrong with him.

When they got to problem ten, Danny suddenly stiffened in his chair. He glanced up warily, casting his eyes around the room.

A moment later there was a girlish scream from the back of the classroom. A tiny squidlike ghost the size of a basketball had attached itself to a girl in the back room, and she was flailing her arms trying to remove it. There were several more screams as three identical ghosts phased up through the floor and started slinking their way toward students. Mass panic happened instantaneously. Everyone was tearing out of their seats, stumbling for the opposite end of the classroom, one of the jocks shoved past Sam and sent her falling behind the teacher's desk.

Well, it wasn't an average day at Casper High without a ghost attack.

The only person left in the back was the girl crying hysterically, trying to remove the glowing squid from her leg. Sam rose from the floor, drawn by the pain in the girl's voice. Everyone had fled the classroom but Mr. Craft, who was tearing at his hair, obviously terrified but not wanting to abandon a student. There were six squids now, and they were all slithering towards Sam and the teacher.

Sam wasn't too worried though, because it wasn't an average ghost attack on Casper High without Danny Phantom showing up.

And speak of the devil, Phantom flew through the wall and sent a blast of bright green ectoplasm that dislodged the squid from the girl's leg easily. He sucked it up into his mysterious thermos quickly, turning the blue tractor beam on the scattering ghosts on the floor. It was literally over in a matter of seconds.

Mr. Craft collapsed against the whiteboard, clutching his heart.

"Jeez, some days I feel like they're not even trying," Phantom said to himself, capping his thermos. He looked up and noted Sam and Mr. Craft there. He flew over to them slowly, keeping a healthy distance from Mr. Craft. "Are you going to be okay?" he asked, watching the teacher's chest heaving. Craft nodded numbly. "I gotta go round the rest of these up. There were some out in the hall.. god only knows where else they are." They all looked downward as a scream resonated up from the classroom below them.

He cocked his head toward Sam, smiling wryly. "But fear not, citizen!" he told her, wagging his finger and speaking in a tone far deeper than the one he'd had before. "Danny Phantom is on the job."

Right, hero voice. She rolled her eyes heavily at him. He winked playfully and did a backflip into the floor, vanishing without a trace.

The students slowly meandered back in over the next ten minutes, and Mr. Craft was flustered but demanded the students continued their work for the remaining fifteen minutes of class. Ghost attacks happened too often to allow them to disturb the learning process.

Sam hadn't even noticed Danny slip out amidst all the previous chaos. He didn't come back with all the other students.

Not that she was surprised. She'd have been more surprised if he did. When the bell rang she turned in his half-finished assignment for him.

. . . . .

It was a Saturday night again. A normal Saturday night meant bike riding for her, but she still hadn't gotten around to buying a new one. Saturday used to be movie marathon night with Tucker, but they'd changed it to Sunday ever since she started Saturday shifts at Skulk and Lurk. So she'd usually ride her bike for a bit once she got home to relieve the boredom.

But now, she was stuck with nothing to do. It was one in the morning but she wasn't remotely tired. She was laying the wrong way on her bed, letting her hair trail off the foot end of it, holding her book over her head. Heavy metal poured out of the speakers on her computer. Her parents' room was on the opposite end of the enormous house, so she could really put it on full blast and they still wouldn't hear.

She rested the book on her face, letting her arms fall to the sides. This book was not what the book jacket had cracked it up to be. It was exceedingly cheesy and overwritten. She contemplated just abandoning it altogether. But there wasn't another book in her house she hadn't already read, and she was bored out of her mind.

There was a tapping sound on the glass of her window. She turned to look, and the book slid off her face onto the floor. She got up and silenced the music, listening. She was convinced she'd imagined it when it happened again.

When she got to the dark window she lifted it, and found herself staring straight into Phantom's luminous eyes. "Oh, hi," she managed.

"Is this a bad time?" he asked, taking in her shocked expression.

"No, not at all. I was just surprised. You can come in, you know," she said, stepping aside when he lingered there outside.

"Did I interrupt you reading?" he asked, looking at the book forgotten on the floor.

"Nah. That book is absolutely terrible."

"So what were you doing?"

"You know, thinking about the injustice in society and whatnot, the fleeting nature of humanity. Normal teenage girl stuff. Hey, your hero voice didn't work on me by the way. It definitely didn't inspire confidence."

"Ah, now that's just mean."

Sam settled on the edge of her bed, trying not to think about the fact that there was a ghost in her room. That she was hanging out with a ghost. That she had invited there. Not just any ghost either, it was The Ghost, the most infamous one, the heavily debated hero of Amity Park. She fought back a grin, wondering what Paulina and her fan club would say about this.

"Hey, weird question, do you happen to have any gauze?" he asked her, sitting cross-legged midair in front of her. "I kind of nicked my hand earlier."

Sam blinked. A ghost who wanted gauze. Now that was interesting. "I'll be right back," she told him, and wandered off to her bathroom. When she got back he had taken off his long white glove and was inspecting the palm of his hand.

"Come here," she commanded.

"I can do it," he replied haughtily, reaching out for the gauze.

"One handed?" she intoned, raising an eyebrow. "Yeah, that's what I thought. Now give me your stupid hand."

He sheepishly allowed her to take him by the wrist. His skin was cold to the touch like marble, and she shivered. _Nicked_ his hand? The long gash on the palm of his hand looked ghastly, and oozed green ectoplasm where a human would have bled. She paled at the sight of it.

"Don't worry about it," he said. "It doesn't hurt that much." He held very still as she wrapped the white gauze gingerly around his skin.

"I didn't know ghosts needed gauze," she said conversationally as he carefully pulled his glove on over the bandage.

He chuckled. "They don't. I like it though. Keeps me from bleeding out like a stuck pig." He flexed and unflexed his fingers. "Thanks, that feels great actually. Don't worry, I heal fast anyway."

"That's gotta be nifty as hell," she said.

He glanced up, amusement dancing in his eyes. "Yeah, it's nifty alright. My most nifty power."

"So are you here because you're bored?" she asked, leaning back onto her elbows.

"Actually, yeah. No ghosts about tonight."

"Is it nice to take a break?"

"You have no idea."

"I'm kinda flattered," she said. "The ghost boy has free time and he wants to hang out with _me_, a lowly human?" she said melodramatically.

"The lowly human sounded like she wanted some company last time I talked to her."

Sam shrugged. "Yeah. I get kinda bored sometimes. Most of the people who go to Casper are pricks. I only have one real friend to hang with. He's awesome, but he's not free a hundred percent of the time, you know?"

"Yeah, that's gotta suck. I understand what you mean about the high school. I mean, I have to spend a lot of my time there because of the attacks, and I've seen how bad the students can be."

"You know, it's hard to believe you're this bored when there's a fan club devoted to worshipping you. Don't you know those girls would trip over themselves for a chance to have a conversation with you?"

Phantom cringed noticeably. "Yeah I try to pretend that thing doesn't exist… Did you know that one of them has what can only be described as a _shrine _in their locker dedicated to me?"

Sam burst out laughing. "You mean Paulina? Yeah, she's completely obsessed with you. She tells anyone she can that you're her boyfriend. It's actually pretty sad. Don't worry, no one believes her," she added at the struck expression on Phantom's face.

"That's good, I guess."

"So… you wanna do something?"

He drifted idly forward. Sometimes it looked like he was lazily following the direction of a slight breeze, like he wasn't actually controlling the way he moved. "Like what?" he asked, cocking his head to the side the way he did. Like a puppy when you called it's name.

"I dunno. What do ghosts like to do?"

He grinned widely at her, his smile all shining teeth. "I like to do everything humans like to do."

"I was gonna throw on the album I was listening to, but for some reason you don't strike me as a heavy metal kind of guy."

He contemplated that. "I'm more like a rock n roll kind of guy." A ghost who listens to rock n roll. Go figure.

"I can do rock n roll," Sam admitted. His grin was infectious. She could feel it spreading to her cheeks. "Who do you listen to?"

"You ever heard of Blue Oyster Cult?"

She shook her head slowly.

"You like sick guitar riffs?"

She nodded.

"Perfect."

So Sam jammed with a ghost for three hours before her parents walked in unceremoniously and told her to shut off the noise and go to sleep. When she glanced up in shock, he had disappeared from his place lounging on her ceiling. When her parents left she climbed under her covers, feeling oddly dejected. She jumped when he materialized in the exact same place he'd been lounging before, having never moved.

"Goodnight, Sam," he said quietly. His green eyes cast the whole room in a strange dim light. His body glowed softly against the black roof.

"Night, Phantom," she whispered back.

"Call me Danny," he replied before slipping away through her ceiling.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

x - x - x

Seeing Phantom at school was a new level of strange. In all honesty Sam didn't think she'd gone a full week since freshman year of high school without seeing some trace of the ghost around Casper High, but now when she saw him it was different.

She'd have been lying to herself if she said it wasn't satisfying to see Phantom speed past a sighing Paulina attempting to flag him down, but slow down enough to flash Sam a wide grin before going after the offending ghost. Secrets were fun, and this was the funnest secret she'd ever had.

After that first rock filled Saturday night, Sam had spent the majority of Sunday soaking up corny horror movies in her basement theater with Tucker. Her meeting with Phantom was on the tip of her tongue the whole night, but for some reason she refrained from telling him. She couldn't justify to herself why – after all there wasn't a secret in the world she kept from Tucker. But for whatever reason she kept her mouth shut about it.

"Ha! Comere you…"

"You stay back! Fuck- No, get outta here!"

The muscles in Sam's thumbs convulsed as she tried desperately to get away, but Donkey Kong finally caught up with her on the highest platform and unleashed his massively frustrating bongos-attack.

"Goddammit!" Sam shrieked as her Kirby flew up and smashed comically into the screen. She threw the controller down in anguish as Phantom laughed maniacally next to her. She turned to glare but it was hard not to laugh at him, he looked so ridiculous hanging in the air like that. His shining white hair spilling down below his face like a waterfall of snow. He looked too damn smug.

"_Told_ you I could beat you playing upside down."

"Yeah well fuck you!" she sulked, folding her arms. She wouldn't have guessed in a million years that _Danny Phantom_ would kick her ass at Super Smash Bros. Tucker was the king of that game, and Sam could even beat him on her better days. So imagine her surprise when a _ghost _of all things smacked her down like a fly.

"Ah, don't be a sore loser," Phantom prodded, gently twisting around so that he was lounging on his stomach. "I'm just good at it because I don't abide by the laws of gravity."

"Must be nice," she sneered.

"Oh it's very nice," he answered genuinely. "Wanna play again?"

"I don't feel like losing _again," _she retorted. She wanted to wipe the smirk off his face. "Why are you so good at video games anyway?"

"I was a big fan of them before I died," he shrugged.

"Oh," she said carefully, noting his vanished smile. He always seemed to be a bit touchy about the subject of his death, like most ghosts were. So Sam tried to skirt around it when possible. After a moment of him staring blankly at DK posing triumphantly as the winner on the TV screen, Sam suddenly shivered.

He snapped to attention, giving her a furtive glance before drifting off to the other end of the room.

"Hey, why do you do that?"

Phantom gazed down from his new spot in the upper corner by her window. "Do what?"

"When you float too close to me you act like I shocked you and fly away. I don't freakin bite, you know," she added in a hurt tone.

He looked exceedingly guilty. "It's not you. It's just.. you were shivering."

She took a moment to process that, thinking about the goosebumps on her bare arms and legs. "Oh… Is that because of you?" She remembered the cool feel of the skin on his wrist, the way his breath came almost like morning mist when he spoke in her direction. And here she was thinking the AC was just on too high.

"When I stay in one place too long it.. starts to get a little colder. I can.. I can go if you want."

"No!" she said quickly. "Come on, like I care. I'm a Goth, remember? Our hearts are made of frost." She grinned wickedly.

He scoffed. "Your heart is _not_ made of frost."

"Oh yeah and how would you know?"

Phantom gave her a dubious look that plainly said '_honey, please'_ and she crossed her arms defiantly at him. He answered by saying, "Come off it, you care way too much. For the past two hours you've been talking non-stop about that article you read about PETA and telling me how hypocritical their practices are, and talking about what they really should be doing in regards to animal rights… Oh and last time I was here you were all up in arms about the new immigration law – What?" He paused at the look on Sam's face.

"…You were actually listening to all that?"

"Well.. yeah?" He blinked, confusion evident on his face.

"Sorry.. It's just that when I talk to Tucker about that kind of stuff he zones out with record speed. I can't actually remember the last time someone _listened _when I ranted about those things. And for the love of god, will you stop haunting my ceiling and come back down here already, Phantom? I swear I don't care that you're cold." She scooted backwards on the soft carpet to lean against her bedframe and dragged the blanket over the edge and threw it over her pale legs. "See? Perfect."

Reluctantly he descended from the ceiling, hovering a few feet away from her. "You still calling me that?" he asked lightly.

She averted her eyes, opting to watch Donkey Kong repeatedly strike the same victory pose. Phantom had dropped in on her every weekend since September when he first showed up, so that was four visits now. And he'd reminded her every time that he preferred 'Danny.'

"I'm sorry," she offered. "It just feels weird to call you Danny." She chanced a glance at him, wondering what to say. "In case I haven't made it clear, I've never had very many friends. And I used to have a best friend named Danny."

"Used to? …What happened?" There was thinly veiled curiosity in his glowing eyes.

Sam sighed heavily and poked at the joystick of the controller on the floor, biting her lip. Seeing Danny face to face so much recently had only drudged up a bunch of shitty what-ifs and emotions that she thought she'd successfully buried. But she was not about to get into all that with a ghost that she barely knew.

He seemed to sense her hesitation and added, "I'm sorry, you don't have to answer that. In case I haven't made it clear, I don't have _any _friends. I can be really tactless, but it's just cause I'm out of practice." He grinned apologetically. "Ignore me, I'm an ass. Rant about PETA some more." He rested his cheek against his forearms, effectively hiding half his face, his bright eyes peaking up playfully over his loose black sleeves.

"Oh shut up, it's okay. But I really am not getting humiliated with another round of this game, so let's do something else."

"Actually," he glanced at the clock on her nightstand flashing 1:40am, "as much as I hate to say this, I should really go patrol for awhile."

"What, am I distracting you from your guard dog duties?"

"Maybe a little."

"Oh whatever, go find some ghost to beat up on. I'll beat up on Donkey Kong while you're gone to vent my frustration of getting my ass whooped."

"You gonna stay up much longer?"

"Probably. Why, are you gonna come back later?"

"Probably."

. . . . .

On a Tuesday night in late October, Sam tucked her hands behind her head and lost the battle with yawning. The only light in the room was the yellow flame of a fat candle burning low in her windowsill, and the faint whitish glow emanating from the other occupant in the room.

Above her, Phantom immediately mirrored the action against his will. "Made you yawn," she declared sleepily. Apparently that worked even on ghosts.

"It's your turn," he mumbled, his foot kicking methodically as he rested his ankle on his knee. It was truly a struggle to stay awake with her intensely fluffy pillow cushioning her head. Phantom lay above her on the ceiling like a reflection. He had this habit of hanging out everywhere in her room except for the floor or furniture.

"Okay…" She felt another yawn rising and stifled it. It was well past three in the morning but she didn't feel like sleeping just yet. "Well one time, I was at the mall with Tucker and Danny.. this was in like eighth grade I think. We'd cut class to pick up the new release of Zombie Splatter.. we knew it would be sold out by the time school got out. Anyway, we were in GameZone just looking around when suddenly our _gym teacher _walks in. Like what was he even _doing_ there? Naturally we all dove out of sight, but freakin' Tucker just _had_ to hide behind the cashier's desk, and he knocked over the poor chick behind there. Totally tangled together. She was screeching 'Pervert!' and me and Danny were beside ourselves laughing. Do I even have to say that we got caught? Yeah we got kicked out of the mall, gym teacher saw us there, we got a week of detention. That game was fun as hell though."

Phantom was snickering. "Do you have any stories about Tucker that _don't _involve embarrassing him?" he joked.

"Not many," she kidded. "Alright ghost boy, now you go."

"Hmm… Okay, I got one. Once, Skulker handcuffed me to the Red Huntress – you've see her about right? And he dropped us on his island in the Ghost Zone to hunt us both at once. It was kind of a nightmare."

"…You're kidding me right?"

"I wish," he said dryly.

"…So? Is that it?"

"Well, we escaped, if that's what you mean."

"You know, you have great stories, but your delivery could use some definite improvement."

"Are you saying I need.. a _ghostwriter?"_

After a moment of contemplating his shit-eating grin she deadpanned, "That was probably the stupidest pun I've ever heard."

"Ouch, Sam! Alright, alright. Your turn again."

Sam stifled another pending yawn with the back of her hand. "I'm too tired.. to tell another story…" she mumbled, feeling her eyelids flutter.

"You want me to go so you can sleep?"

"You can leave… once I pass out," she commanded groggily. "Entertain me till then."

She let her eyes close for a few brief moments, but they shot open when something cold and wet touched her face. Her hand shot up to her cheek instinctively and she felt a few flecks of… snow? "Too cold!" she snapped at him as he snickered up on her ceiling. She buried her face under her thick purple blanket and said "Go snow on someone else, Invisobill!"

"Nah.. this is too much fun."

She peaked, and saw with relief that he wasn't releasing any more snow. "Why do you hang around me anyway?" she asked quietly.

"You asked me to," he replied with a shrug of the shoulders.

A sleepy smile crept onto her face. "Yeah but I never in a million years thought you would take me up on it. Why me? Out of anyone else?"

"To be honest?" He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced away. The movement of his flashing green irises was vivid in the otherwise dark room. "I missed people. I wanted to talk to someone. Anyone. And you were the realest girl I'd ever met. Other people, when they meet me, either love me or hate me. They treat me like a hero or they treat me like a villain. You.. treated me like a person."

She blinked lazily, his words churning over slowly in her mind. At this point she felt like she had one foot in a dream, and the dark bedroom was growing fuzzier by the moment. "You are a person," she muttered to the inside of her eyelids.

A soft breeze next to her ear whispered, "Night, Sam."

"Night, Danny," she whispered back to the dream.

The room went black as the breeze blew out the dying candle.

. . . . .

The beginning of November brought a string of cold showers to Amity Park, and the world was a constant gray drizzle, the rolling clouds above letting loose sporadically. Leaky faucets in the sky.

Sam opened the door to her bedroom, shook out her shoulder-length dripping hair, and dropped the bag of new candles on her bed. The absolute best thing about working at her favorite store was the twenty percent discount. Four partially melted candles littered the windowsill, all different widths and shades of red. Sam reached for the tallest one and struck a match. It wasn't often that she came into her room and didn't light the signal anymore. Only when she was leaving, changing or showering did she blow out all the candles nowadays.

At around midnight she looked up from _A Clockwork Orange_ when Danny flew in through her window. "Hi," she called, tucking a homemade bookmark into the pages. "Rough night?" she asked tentatively, taking in the tears on his black pants, the rip on his left glove stained with luminescent green, the rip on his collar that led up into a sharp cut on his neck.

He answered her with an exhausted look, plopping down sideways into her computer chair, the tips of his dripping wet hair sticking in every direction. "It was a nightmare," he groaned.

"Wanna talk about it?" she prodded.

"It was some ghost I'd never seen before. Caught her," he muttered, waving his thermos around and setting it down sharply on her desktop. "Stupid ghost was haunting some kid's treehouse. Nearly killed the kid on accident. Some ghosts have the strangest obsessions."

"Obsessions?" she repeated curiously.

His eyes flitted over to Sam, and the chair wheeled around to face her. "Well, yeah. I don't know how much you know about the way ghosts function, but not everyone becomes one. When you do it's because there's something in this life that you're so attached to that you just can't let it go. Like you know Skulker - his obsession is hunting. I know you've seen Technus around at the school, and it won't surprise you to know his obsession is with technology. Stuff like that."

She cocked her head at him, and she could see in his changed expression that he sensed the question forming on her lips. "Do you have an obsession, Danny?"

A smile might have flickered for a moment at the edge of his lips, but it disappeared. She wanted to take it back, to erase the sudden awkwardness that hung palpable in the air, but she really wanted to know. Raindrops pattered on her window in the silence between them.

After a moment of staring at his bent knees he answered. "Yeah, I think I do. When I died I didn't have a clear conviction in mind, but it's been made pretty crystal to me since then. I protect Amity Park."

That wasn't very surprising. "At least your obsession isn't boxes," she told him, thinking of the Box Ghost.

His face lit up at that, snapping quickly out of his reverie.

Sam made him listen to her music that night. She was going to convert him to the dark black music that her parents hated oh so much. He listened to the sappy lyrics and he laughed. She couldn't help an unwarranted prickle of sadness when he burst out laughing at one particular line that said "_Take this razor, sign your name across my wrists" _– and she had to admit the line was awfully corny – but her laugh didn't come out because in that moment he sounded just like her old Danny, though his voice was the tinny filtered sound of a ghosts. It sounded like Danny's laugh playing on a quiet record.

Her line of thought crashed as she noticed that _this _Danny was staring at her.

"Can I tell you something?" he asked softly. A new song started up on her speakers, the tinkling strum of a ukulele. Without waiting for her to answer he said, "I know I told you we couldn't be friends, but I think it's kind of obvious that we already are."

"Right, well, a rose by any other name…" At his baffled expression, she clarified, "I'm saying that just because you don't call it 'friends' doesn't mean we aren't friends."

He poked absently at the rip in the callous material of his glove. "I know that. Look.. I gave up the luxury of friendship when I died. I needed to, because I had to put my full focus on protecting Amity. And I couldn't let friends get hurt because of me, and what I do. But this… talking to you… I don't know. I feel so different. It's like I'm waking up again. I've been in a trance for the last few years, just forcing myself to get by. You can't imagine what it's like to finally have a friend again, after all this time. I forgot," he whispered. "I forgot what it was like." His green eyes looked up at her through his eyelashes. "Which is why I'm caving in, against my better judgement."

"What are you saying, exactly?"

His cheeks abruptly turned slightly green, a faint glow coming off of them, reminiscent of his eyes. Sam realized with a shock that he was blushing. "I'm officially asking if we can be friends."

Sam fought the urge to giggle. And she _never, ever _giggled – but the urge was welling up in her now. It was that hilarious glowing blush on his cheekbones. She wondered if he knew that he did that. "You don't have to ask, stupid," she chastised. "I wouldn't leave a candle inviting in someone who I didn't already consider a friend."

His smile could have lit up the entire downtown area.

* * *

At this point I kind of have the outline for this story fleshed out (I'm pretty bad with planning ahead haha). But to give you an idea, it may come out to around fifteen chapters.

Review and let me know how you like it so far!


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

x - x - x

"I'm starting to get sick of this tofu burger."

Tucker raised his eyebrows skeptically at her over his thick-rimmed glasses, pausing in his attack on his own dripping burger. God, his looked disgusting. Like someone slaughtered a cow and put it directly between two buns. "You've only taken one bite!" he protested.

"I mean in general," she clarified with a huff. "The vegan options in this city are brutally thin on the ground. And the Nasty Burger is the absolute worst."

"You could share my delicious double-patty melt," he said, wiggling his eyebrows.

She made a horrified gagging face at him, before burying her nose back in the thick book laid next to her tray on the white tabletop.

The open page displayed a newspaper article nearly a century old, a lesser headline reading "_Ghost sighted again at the tracks."_ Underneath was a blurb about the article and the surrounding research.

_In January 1912 a laborer at the railroad named Gregory Amos died of a heart attack. There were reported sightings of his ghost in August of that year, with subsequent sightings reported in 1931 and 1950. (See page 198.) This ghost was not seen again until September 2004, at which time sightings became remarkably frequent and well-documented. (See page 199.) This ghost, whose chosen haunt is any variety of cubic container, is widely known today as the Box Ghost. Origin of ghostly obsession debated. (See page 260.)_

"Earth to Sam?" Tucker was saying across the table, waving his hand over her book. "Come in, do you copy?" He stopped when Sam glanced up from the passage. "Why are you so suddenly obsessed with this book? You've been reading it all week. And you've never been all that interested in ghosts."

"That's not true," she countered. "I love everything dark and scary!" She flashed him her fingernails, which had little black spiders painted on them, as if to prove to him her point. "Ghosts totally fall under that category. Plus, it's interesting," she admitted. "Don't you want to know what people have to say about the ghosts haunting Amity?"

Tucker shrugged indifferently. "I really think I get _enough_ of ghosts just trying to do my daily business."

"Oh I get it," she said with a wink, "you're still sore about your last PDA."

"You're damn right I am! Well why does there have to be a ghost bent on controlling all my electronics anyway?" he fumed, taking a massively angry bite out of his burger, taking nearly half of it off at once.

She rolled her eyes and flipped to page 260 in the _Ghostly Obsessions _section. "So you're saying you're not interested at all in why the Box Ghost haunts boxes?" He was still trying to swallow his monstrous bite so she continued. "It says here one of his coworkers reported that he'd lost the engagement ring box he was planning on giving his girl just before he died. Isn't that tragic? Although there's a part here that says other people reported he never had a girlfriend at all.. So I guess it's really a mystery for the ages," she snickered.

Tucker finally managed to swallow, letting out a proper belch. God he was like a wild animal sometimes. "I don't really care," he answered, wiping the red sauce off his face. "As long as he's not haunting my boxes. Come to think of it, I haven't seen the Box Ghost around for ages. Doesn't he usually show up at the school at least three times a week?"

"Yeah. Haven't seen him lately though," Sam mused, turning back to the _News Articles_ section, scanning for other familiar ghosts.

Not for the first time since taking this text home from work, Sam wondered idly why Danny Fenton had wanted to read this book. Then she paused for a moment, considering the fact that for the first time ever she had just identified her old best friend by his first _and_ last name subconsciously. Like he was a stranger.

But it was really no mystery to her why. 'Danny' had taken on kind of a new meaning.

She told herself she wasn't doing research on him. She was just interested, that was all. When Danny told her about obsessions a few weeks ago, she had realized just how little she really knew about ghosts. Especially considering one of her best friends was one. _Best friend? Where did that come from?_ Well.. yeah. He kind of _was_ her other best friend. Was it... weird that Sam _didn't _think that was weird?

Sam had always been the kind of girl that loved the stuff other girls hated. When she was in elementary school other girls would play games at recess and she would be with Tucker and Danny luring lizards with dead grasshoppers. When her mom tried to get her to brighten up her wardrobe in middle school, she died her hair black and shaved half of it off. Girly stuff had just never appealed to her. Maybe it was because she was _supposed_ to like it, or maybe because she was psychologically scarred by her fifties pin-up mother. To put it simply, most of her coworkers at Skulk and Lurk had to wear store merchandise, like creepy necklaces, gaudy bodices, stuff like that. Sam didn't have to because her wardrobe already looked like that. Sometimes girls at school sneered and called her a witch. Not like she cared.

All this had to do with why Sam never thought twice about having a ghost for a friend. It just seemed the natural thing to do. It wasn't strange. Ghosts were just a part of life in Amity, so why not make friends with the nice one?

Recently she found she kept having to remind herself that Danny was dead, which felt strange to say, even in her mind. It was just that he acted so human. So normal, in comparison to any other ghost she'd encountered. It was hard to think of him as not alive, when he was so vibrant. It was hard to look into his gemlike eyes and picture him at a moment of death, trying to picture what he looked like before dying. It was even harder when he refused to talk about his former life at all. She had told Danny almost everything about herself, but she knew hardly anything about his life prior to death. Sam couldn't picture him as anyone but who he was right now, couldn't imagine him without that soft candle glow that always hung about him like a hazy mist.

The only thing he'd ever mentioned about his death was that he was "electrocuted." Sam resisted a shudder. Resisted the jarring mental image of Danny's wide eyes, his hair static shocked, a painful Lichtenburg scar searing up along his chest… She didn't like to think about it. And he really didn't like to talk about it.

So yeah, if she was being honest, she _was_ doing research. There was a lot in this book about Danny Phantom, since it was published just recently. This past autumn. Every contributing author had their two cents about Phantom. Much of it was terrible and wrong, to her dismay, but some of it was true and showed Danny in his proper light. She grinned as she thumbed over the passage on page 18 detailing the defeat of Pariah Dark, back in Sam's freshman year of high school. She remembered that.

But the book didn't have anything to say about who Danny was before he died. Nobody, anywhere, had anything but empty hands on that topic.

Once, she had asked him.

_"What was your name before you died?" She didn't honestly think his name was always Phantom._

_He glanced up at her sadly from the book he was reading on her bed. "Don't ask me that," he said, without malice. "Please. Don't ask me things I can't answer."_

She was never sure if he didn't remember, or if he just didn't want to remember.

Without admitting to herself how nosy she was being, she'd poured over the obituaries for the entire year of 2004, the year Danny first showed up in Amity Park. And a few years prior to that. And found nothing, really. No pictures that resembled him, no Dannys who died.

Though to be fair, the book in front of her now had spent a large chapter devoted to the highly noted increase of all ghostly activity come September of the year 2004. There were a multitude of theories regarding the reasons behind the sudden rise in ghost attacks at the turn of the century, when ghosts long forgotten suddenly began showing up again. And that was the same time Danny showed up, so in all honesty he really could be any number of decades old. Like the Box Ghost, who died all the way back in 1912 and now haunted every street corner.

Somehow it seemed she would never know who Danny was, which was what made it all the harder to think of him as dead.

Her book closed with a thump and she let out an involuntary sigh, leaning her head back against the booth.

"Nice necklace," Tucker said, crumpling up his burger's wrapper into a tiny ball. "I thought you said you would never be caught dead wearing DP merch? I thought it was too, quote-unquote, mainstream?"

Sam looked down reactively to her neck, where a tiny "DP" symbol rested on a black chain, above the necklace that had a dozen tiny metal bats dangling loosely.

"Since when are you a Phantom fanatic?" he asked skeptically. "You didn't run off and join Paulina's fan club did you?" He gave her a sick expression.

"Um _no,_ I didn't,"she replied hotly. "But I _do_ support Danny Phantom. I mean.. he's a hero, you know? He gets enough hate from this town. People who support him should say so."

"Whatever you say Sammy," he chuckled, getting up to toss their trash. "But I swear if I find a shrine in your locker…"

"_Tucker!"_ She shoved him playfully as they headed out the glass doors.

As they stepped out into the parking lot the two friends stopped cold, halted by a line of chattering onlookers that were crowding under the overhanging roof of the Nasty Burger. It became immediately evident that they were under there for cover, because there was a spectacular aerial battle taking place overhead.

A monstrous red behemoth with a spiked tail whipping like a mace was circling some dozens of feet above them, and it parted its cavernous beak to let loose an ear-shattering roar. An onslaught of smaller crimson ghosts buzzed out of its beak like mosquitos, flapping insectile wings as they descended down toward the panicking crowd. One look at Tucker told her he was going to be sick.

As Sam's hand dipped into her purse instinctively for her only defense (her patented Fenton wrist ray, the mace-spray-for-ghosts) purple flashes of light caught her attention, in that they were coming _up_ from the parking lot and blasted a couple of the looming mosquitoes out of the air. Standing on her toes to look over the citizens bum-rushing the front doors to get inside, Sam saw what was happening. Four nondescript white vans were scattered around the lot, several white motor scooters pulled up and abandoned around the side of the building, with men wearing stark white head to toe bustling out of them, aiming heavy guns into the air.

Even as she watched, two of the mosquitoes were taken down in a net, but a dozen more escaped. She ground her teeth angrily, knowing full well what was about to happen when Danny inevitably arrived on the scene. Sam was never partial to the racist government agency, but in this new light cast on them by her friendship with Danny, they were downright demon spawn to her.

Distantly she felt Tucker yanking on her arm, trying to pull her towards the door, but she had spotted a black blur coming around the far building, a fleeting reflection on the third-story glass. Her eyes were trained on him, venom dripping from her gaze as she watched him dodge nets cast by the GIW below. Never mind that he was _helping _them of course…

"_SAM!"_ She snapped back to the ground as Tucker shoved her full force into the wall of the Nasty Burger, a blood red mosquito the size of a Labrador whizzing past them with a hiss. It turned around to go at Tucker but Sam had found her head again, and raised her wrist steadily. She'd done this before. A quick aim with the squint of an eye – she bent down her middle finger to sharply squeeze the trigger on her inner wrist, and the ghost fizzled and hit the ground at Tucker's feet.

"Damn, girl!" Tucker breathed, but then another two ghosts were descending on them. Sam leveled her arm again and punched out a series of blasts. They all connected but one ghost shook itself off and screeched, sending a laser bright shock of light at the source of its pain. Sam's wrist exploded into agony as her weapon was literally blasted off her skin – the metal band broke and it whipped up her arm, into her shoulder. Everything went white as Sam fell to her knees, clutching her arm to her chest.

Numbly she saw green lights flying past, watched half a dozen blurry red ghosts fall around them, felt Tucker's arms around her waist, heaving her upright. Flashes of white-blue light, the red corpses disappeared. One glance down told her there was blood on her, bright blisters. She looked away, saw white tuxedos aiming at the blur of black in the air. Danny. Danny was there. More red streaks flying towards her, she and Tucker were alone on the sidewalk. But before they reached her the streak of black turned into a luminous face in front of her, two floating orbs of green light like concerned fireflies.

A tingling cool sensation, weightless suddenly, a blur of colors, and she found herself on the dirty tile floor of the Nasty Burger, surrounded by loud panicking people.

"Danny?" she asked the empty air between her and Tucker – he was already gone.

She pushed Tucker away, who was trying to look at her arm, and lurched straight to the window. She could hear the dragonlike ghost screeching, shaking the glass, watched as a blue haze enveloped its skin and sucked it away, like a supernova eaten by a black hole. Her right arm was screaming like grating knives, but strangely she hated the tuxedoed men right now more than the ghost that injured her.

The fucking pricks were _still_ trying to capture Danny, even though he just saved fucking _everyone._

But then, that was always how it went. Wasn't it?

Luckily for the whole town, the agency sucked dick in comparison to Danny when it came to capturing ghosts. Sure they could beat them into submission, sometimes, but nobody had a thermos quite like Danny Phantom's. Nobody knew what Danny did with the ghosts he captured either. Except for Sam, who Danny let in on the secret. ("Bottomless thermos," he had called it with a wry and prideful expression. He took one of the Fentons' weapons, the gun that shot singularity portals to suck ghosts in with one shot, and modified the technology to fit into the bottom of their thermos. Sam called him a genius. He blushed madly and told her it wasn't that difficult.)

_Go! _Sam screamed at him silently. Now that the threat was gone he should leave, in case the GIW stopped sucking and actually captured him. But instead he was flying straight toward her where she was pressed against the glass. His face was suddenly looming an inch from hers, his jaw partially obscured by the giant backwards "N" in the logo on the window. She shook her head at him in alarm, pointing at the men barreling toward the front of the store behind him. But they wouldn't shoot directly at the window, she realized, not with the civilians inside.

_'What are you doing?' _she mouthed through the glass.

"_I'm going to have to pretend I don't know you in public," _he had told her countless times before. _"Don't ever forget that I have enemies."_

But here he was now, staring at her openly - his eyes were wide as saucers, and kept flitting to her arm, where she could feel blood dripping, she could feel her skin alive like fire from the burn.

_'I'M FINE!' _she mouthed, and if she could mouth the sensation of screaming she would.

With one last glance at her arm he dropped straight into the ground, just as the agents swarmed the sidewalk, cursing and casting their heads around wildly. Several took off their heat sensing goggles and threw them to the ground out of frustration – what good were they when your target was flying underground?

Tucker and Sam left the restaurant last, after the anxious crowd had dispersed. The aftermath of ghost attacks in Amity were always short-lived. The novelty of them wore off fast when they happened daily. People got over it quickly, even the most terrified of citizens.

Tucker kept his arm gingerly around Sam's waist, watching her warily as they paused on the sidewalk.

"Ah shit," Sam muttered, stooping to pick up her battered wrist ray. The band was mangled, and while the actual device looked uninjured the trigger was demolished. "My wrist ray!" she keened, picking up the other half of the trigger from the ground.

"_That's_ what you're worried about?" Tucker demanded. "We're getting you to the hospital right now. Have you _looked _at your arm?" he asked incredulously.

"It isn't so bad," Sam whispered, shoving the broken bits of metal into her little black purse.

She thought of Danny rousing her from a sound sleep apologetically at four am just the week before, asking her to bandage a gash on his back. _"I can't reach back there," _he'd told her contritely. The way the wet green of it glistened in the candlelight from her window, the way he tensed and didn't make a sound as she washed and wrapped it. How even when he was hurt he seemed so much more human than ghost. _"You usually do this by yourself?"_ she had asked him. He had offered her a toothy grin. At the time she'd been thinking of the bike accident she'd had freshman year, when a skateboarder had sent her careening into the pavement. A nasty cut on her thigh had cast her into wracking sobs. So small, so insignificant. The scar from it was a faint crescent the size of her finger. While bandaging Danny she had seen a network of white lines, traced a frightening ragged scar that stretched around the left side of his ribcage, and felt an intensely foreign emotion surge through her violently.

"It really doesn't hurt that bad," she assured Tucker more vehemently, though her arm's skin was shrieking the opposite.

_"Repeat, target 1-A escaped."_

Sam's eyes were drawn to a couple of agents standing off to the side, huddled together, one talking into a headset.

_"Yes, I repeat. Attempt at capture failed. Contact was lost. Ordering a full regroup."_

She winced in pain as her fists clenched involuntarily. The nerve of them. The stupid GIW agency had suddenly appeared in Amity Park just over a year ago, and now they were so imposing it was almost like a full-time military occupation. Some people didn't mind them, but you'd have to be an idiot not to see that all they did was impede the _real _ghost hunters in their work.

Tucker led her away, repeating the word "hospital" with increasing urgency, ignoring her protests that she was fine. She dimly felt grateful for her best friend, and remembered with a surge that he was deathly terrified of anything related to hospitals. She smiled up at him to let him know that she knew what he was sacrificing as they stumbled towards his car.

And as they walked past an empty white motor scooter with the logo "GIW" printed on the front, Sam gave it a massive shove with the flat end of her boot and sent it crashing to its side.

She heard someone screech "_My scooter!" _as Tucker closed the car door on her, and she rolled down the window to stick out her middle finger as Tucker peeled out of the parking lot.

* * *

I almost forgot to mention! My ideas about the Box Ghost are inspired directly from Cordria's fic titled "Dreams of Light." Basically, it's awesome and you need to read it. Also, the "bottomless thermos" idea is again directly inspired from one of Cordria's one-shots (one of my all-time favorites) called (surprise, surprise) "Bottomless Thermos." It's number 48 in her 'Nova Shots' collection and you should absolutely positively go read it. I just loved the idea so much that it's pretty much canon in my head now.


	5. Chapter 5

** Chapter Five**

x - x - x

"Thought you didn't want to be seen as friends in public," she joked from her bed when he phased through her window that night, accidentally snuffing out her flickering blue candle by drifting through it. "You totally almost blew that earlier."

"Please, like that matters when you're _in danger," _he muttered, descending on her wrapped right arm. "Did they treat this properly? Ectoplasmic burns are different than regular ones and-"

Sam tugged her arm out of his grasp, though the action sent a stab of pain through her shoulder. "I'm fine, Danny. Relax. Don't be such a mother hen."

"Don't tell me what to do," he replied scathingly and stuck out his tongue, grabbing for her arm again. "Gimme."

"God it's like you're three years old sometimes."

He laughed as Sam reluctantly allowed him to inspect the wrappings. "Well I guess you could say I _am _three_, _in one respect." His eyes shot up fast as he realized what he'd said.

"So... you died three years ago?" she supposed conversationally, as though he hadn't just told her something he'd been trying to avoid telling her.

He didn't answer.

"Does it hurt?" he asked after a moment.

"No," she said, but when he glared up at her she changed her answer to "maybe a little."

"…Can I try something?"

"…Yeah, I guess."

"Where's the actual burn at?" he asked, and she pointed to the space surrounding her wrist. The rest of it was just cuts. "Don't get angry," he warned. "I'll wrap it up good as new, I promise." And with that he phased off the lower half of her bandages with a single stroke. She hissed sharply as the fresh air stung the sweltering burn wrapping around her wrist.

"_Ow,"_ she breathed, despite herself, and clenched her jaw. "_Ow_, you prick, put them back…"

"It's okay," he whispered. He settled down in the space next to her tentatively, sparing her a wary glance. Always, the closer he got to her the more on edge he seemed to get, as if at any moment she were about to renounce their friendship and inform him of her hatred for ghosts. But she couldn't spare the effort to reassure him right now, focusing on the dull ache sparking across her skin.

He pulled off his white gloves and tossed them to the end of the bed. As he slowly lowered his hands down onto her wrist and wrapped them around, she felt an intense relief, a pressing coolness against the fire. She felt him breathe a quiet cool breath against her blistered skin, like a snowy drift. She let out a sigh, relishing the dulling of the pain.

"Better?" he asked.

"Much better," she cooed. "Don't stop doing that."

"I won't," he assured her, with more than a hint of amusement in his voice.

"Good," she said, closing her eyes in a sudden rush of embarrassment. She had noticed his cheeks glowing faintly green again, and she was grateful that her own blood wasn't ectoplasm too because she was sure her face would have been lit up like a Christmas tree.

. . . . .

It took almost three weeks to work up the courage to do what had to be done. Every morning she would stare at the broken mess of metal on her desk, glaring at it like it was all that piece of junk's fault.

Tucker told her whenever she mentioned it that she was stupid, and to just "Buy another one for Christ's sake, your family is _rich!"_

But it wasn't about the money. Sam had a strict no bullshit policy about throwing away electronics. Most people didn't realize how many perfectly functional pieces of technology were rotting away in landfills, polluting the Earth, simply because people were too lazy to fix them and just bought a new one, or an upgrade. She never, ever, discarded things unless they were irreparable.

So as much as Sam _wanted _to, she couldn't. And that meant going to the only people who could repair a Fenton product in this city.

Her phone buzzed in her back pocket and she didn't have to check the name to know it was from Tucker.

_Let me know how it goes._

Breathing deeply, she knocked on the front door and waited.

She was two seconds from sprinting away in retreat when it swung inward and her mouth glued itself shut.

Danny Fenton stood there barefoot in his pajamas, his dark hair sticking up at every angle. As always she bit back the thoughts that sparked without her permission when she saw him. How he seemed to have gone off and grown up somewhere without telling her. He went completely slack-jawed for a moment. "_Sam?"_ he asked, as though she were a ghost. "What uh.. what are you doing here?" he added feebly, his eyes looking anywhere but into her eyes, as though he were trying desperately not to be rude.

And failing, at that. She couldn't say that sentence didn't hurt.

"Relax, Fenton," she said coldly, and realized belatedly that she called him that (because that's how she had to think of him in her mind now – there just wasn't room for two Dannys) and almost wished she could eat her words when the hurt was evident on his face, but the key word was _almost. _"I'm here to see your mom, about one of her inventions."

"_Oh_," he said, and for some reason he did seem to relax. "Oh, okay. Come in," he said, standing aside.

Sam tried not to spare him a glance as she stalked toward the kitchen.

"I'll get her from the lab," he announced quietly as Sam sat at one of the barstools by the countertop.

He disappeared down the steps into the basement laboratory that Sam had only ever seen a handful of times. An urge rose, to look around the downstairs and soak everything in, but she stamped it out like a stray campfire spark. Could it really be more than two years since she was last here? She wondered idly if Danny Fenton's room still looked the same, was still covered in NASA posters… _Stamp_. _Stop that._

He cleared his throat at the top of the stairs. "She said she'll just be a moment."

Sam nodded and removed the parts of the wrist ray from her purse, setting them out on the countertop.

"You uh.. you want something to drink? Or… something?"

Sam looked up incredulously. His face was carefully blank and he hung by the refrigerator, still refusing to meet her eyes. "What are you trying to prove, Danny?" she spat, before she could stop herself.

He blinked at her, but looked more resigned than shocked at her outburst.

"_Stop," _she breathed, "just stop, okay! Don't give me that hurt puppy look. I tried _so hard _with you, so don't look at me like _I'm _the one that screwed it all up. I will never, for the life of me, understand you. Why you always just act all nice to me, like nothing ever happened. Don't. I'm through with you fucking with my head, got it?"

_Well that wasn't what I meant to say. _

Sam was mentally kicking herself. She thought she was _over _all of this! She expected him to explode at her, to look angry, to argue, to anything.

But he just stared at her for a moment, a moment so long she thought she might scream. And then he just nodded soberly a few times, looking down at his shoes. "Yeah, I got it. I wish I could make you understand how sorry I am. For everything."

And before she could form a coherent response he turned heel and retreated up the stairs in the hallway.

At least she had the time to settle her angry shaking hands before Maddie traipsed up the steps.

"Sam!" she called warmly, crossing the room in an instant and enveloped her in a tight embrace. If she had heard Sam yelling at Danny, she didn't give any hint. "It has been way too long since I've seen you, dear."

Sam gave her a smile, but it was strained. They both knew the reason why Sam wasn't around, and it started with a capital D.

As Sam described what had happened to her wrist ray, Maddie's eyes lit up with a sort of fierce pride. "That's my girl!" she exclaimed, when Sam explained she was blasting a ghost with it.

Sam's heart actually physically ached. There had been a time when Maddie was like a mother to her, in a way that Sam's own mother never had been. Jack too, in a funny kind of fatherly way. Although she was sorely glad that Jack wasn't at home right now. He'd always been the one to make subtle lovebird jokes about Danny and Sam, and he just hadn't understood when Danny let the friendship fall apart. Those last few months of freshman year, when Sam and Tucker had been trying so hard to pull Danny out of his funk, Jack just kept making those jokes. Like he thought maybe it would jog Danny into remembering how much he cared. It must not have worked. But Sam didn't think she could handle one of those jokes right now, no matter how well-meaning Jack's heart was.

The truth was it was almost as painful just being inside the Fenton household as it was speaking to Danny. It reminded her of the family that she had once clicked into so perfectly. A misshapen puzzle piece that never could fit into her own family's rigid lines, she had molded so easily into the Fentons' chaotic world.

But Danny had pushed her out. He'd pushed everyone out of his life.

Maddie poked around with tools, and left at one point to get some spare parts from the lab. She would have absolutely paid Maddie for the repair job, but Sam knew the woman well enough to know that offering that would only offend her. _"You're family,"_ Maddie had said to her once, near the end of her freshman year. Maddie knew what was happening to the friendship at that point. No one knew what to do about Danny. "_Always, no matter what, okay? You come to us if you ever need anything at all."_

"We've really missed your presence around here, Sam," Maddie sighed, absently screwing in a miniscule loose nut.

Sam's lips pressed into a thin hard line. If she said _"I missed you guys too"_ then she'd be abandoning the careful lies she had constructed around herself, preserving her sanity.

"I never got the chance to apologize," she went on, her brown hair obscuring her face as she worked intently on the project.

"What for?"

"For the way my son treated you," she sighed. "You and Tucker were the best friends Danny ever had. Jack and I adored you kids. I… I just wish I knew what happened. What happened to Danny." Sam noticed she was clenching the screw driver in her hands, like it might try to slip away any moment.

It wasn't ever the way Danny treated them, not really. It was the way he _didn't. _It all started after his 'accident' in the lab, which the Fentons had never elaborated on. At first it might have been attributed to that, maybe some sort of shock or post-traumatic stress, but the way it went on.. it didn't make any sense. The way he stopped showing up to movie night. Stopped meeting them when he said he would. Pretended to be sick so he wouldn't have to come out of his room. He was never mean, never said anything cruel. He was the same Danny. And yet he slowly pushed everyone out of his life, even his own family.

It had been hard enough for Sam and Tucker, but she couldn't even imagine how hard it must have been for Maddie and Jack, and Jazz too for that matter. Watching your son slowly close himself off from the world, without knowing why. Waking up in the dead of night to find that he's gone, again. Seeing him come home with cuts and bruises he's never able to explain. Learning from the school that he's ditching class, that some days he doesn't show up at school at all. Sam and Tucker tried explaining the ditching problem as a fear of the paranormal, since it happened whenever there was an attack. But it didn't fit with everything else, so it was probably just another excuse. It must have been torture for the Fentons. It must _still _be torture.

And it was torture for Sam to nod and accept Maddie's apology, gently folding herself into a hug that she knew the mother desperately needed.

As she was walking numbly home, her phone buzzed with another text.

_You still over there?_

She ignored it.

When she got to her front door it buzzed again.

_Call me later, k?_

Oh how she wanted to call Tucker. She wanted to scream and sob and rant, and she wanted to talk to Tucker more than anyone about it. Because Tucker understood. He understood and he had been there. But Tucker didn't deserve that. He deserved to not be reminded about it. Sam saw Tucker's face whenever Danny Fenton's name was mentioned, the way he hunched over on himself like he wanted to disappear. Danny Fenton could rot in hell for doing that to Tucker, who was the best friend in the entire world and one that Fenton never deserved.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

x - x - x

Sam sat on the edge of her bed for a long time. She didn't pay attention to how long; when she got home from Fentonworks it was about 5:00pm. Her arms wrapped tightly around her waist and she concentrated very hard on thinking about nothing at all. Meditation was good, it helped her cleanse. By the time Danny showed up two whole candles had burned to the root signalling out to him from the nook of her window. It was black outside.

She felt it when he came in, though her eyes were closed at the moment. It was a subtle shift she'd learned to look out for over time, a sudden drop in temperature by a degree or two, the tiniest sound of a breeze in her otherwise stuffy room. And she thought, _You're okay. You're fine. You meditated, you're good, you're under control, you've got this. Just open your eyes._

And she opened them, and saw Danny standing there, unmasked concern on his face.

And her tiny wall crumbled, and she felt the beginnings of a tear well up in her eye. _Oh no, you are _not_ gonna cry! _she reprimanded herself sharply. _Tough shit, get over it!_ She stood abruptly, her arms still wrapped around her waist, as if keeping them there could keep her from breaking down utterly.

Danny ruined whatever pretense she had left when he asked, "Sam, what's wrong?"

Her head hung forward, so she could hide the tear that slid out without her permission. But he definitely heard the strangled sob that followed it. She felt the familiar coolness radiating from him as he swooped forward, but kept her eyes on the buckles adorning his white boots. She didn't want him to see her crying. Danny Phantom, the strong. The hero.

_Her_ hero.

She didn't want him to see her crying.

"Sam, tell me what's wrong," he whispered, hovering just in front of her, not too close. Even now, after being friends for nearly four months he still acted like he was afraid of her. Or maybe he thought she was afraid of him. Like at any moment she was going to bolt if he did the wrong thing.

She blinked, and several more tears pulled free. _Let them do whatever they want,_ she thought.

"Sam…"

She let her forehead close the gap between them all at once, resting it against the smooth black fabric over his chest as another sob broke. His chest stopped mid-breath, but she really didn't care if he was uncomfortable with it. She wanted a friend to cry on, for once in her life.

"Hey.. hey shh," he said softly, but she just pulled her arms tighter about herself and cried, letting some of her weight lean against him.

He rested his hands first tentatively on her shoulders, and then draped one arm across them while his other hand snuck up to rest in her hair. "It's okay," he murmured, his chin against the top of her head.

For the life of her, Sam couldn't understand why this made her cry harder. "It's n-not okay," she gasped against the brilliant white DP decorating his chest. "It's not."

"What happened, Sam?"

And then, everything was spilling out of her all at once. Everything she thought she was over, that she had buried in a grave and stepped over long ago.

"My b-best friend, that's wha – at happened," she sobbed. "He's the sa – ame as he e – _ever_ was! He's just the s-same s-so how can he be so _different_? How can he act so n-nice to me when _he's _the one who ended it?

"I just wanna know what ha – appened to him. We tried so hard to be th-there for him. We thought of everyth-thing. Drugs, gangs, everything s-seemed so silly. None of i- it was _him. _It c-couldn't have been. But he sti –ill just – faded away. Why would someone not wa – ant any friends?" she asked desperately. "And the worst thing of a – _all, _is that I used to think I w-was in _love _with him." She gritted her teeth, trying and failing to calm her breathing.

"I feel like we _failed him," _she whispered hoarsely into Danny's shirt. "I'm a terrible f-friend. God, I le – et d-down my _best friend."_

She lapsed back into wordless crying as Danny passed one hand soothingly over her hair.

"Shh, Sam," he whispered, and this time instead of making her cry it calmed her, if only just a little.

She suddenly felt a wave of self-consciousness overwhelm her. Sam, the fierce, was _not _crying like a little girl! She tried to stifle the tears, but a few more really wanted to gain their freedom.

Danny's hands were on her shoulders, pushing her away from his chest, and his eyes peaked down at her through her tear-streaked bangs. "Hey, listen to me Sam."

She sniffled but quieted her heaving breaths, struck by the intensity in his gaze.

"I'm not very good at the whole 'comfort' thing. You know I'm out of practice at having friends. But listen." He straightened up so he didn't have to crouch down, and forced Sam's chin up from its dejected position. "None of that stuff could possibly be your fault."

She was about to object when he shook his head.

"Don't argue. You're not responsible for someone else's decisions, you hear me? I'm deeply sorry that you lost a friendship that meant so much to you. I can empathize whole-heartedly, because I had friends too, before I died.

"But you can't beat yourself up over the choices someone else made for themselves. There's absolutely nothing you could have done. You probably went above and beyond as it was."

Sam's breath continued to hitch in her chest as she forced her crying to subside. She tried to wipe the tears from her face with the back of her hand, but her whole face was wet.

"Here, let me," he said gently, and snaked his hand up onto the side of her head in her hair. That cool tingly feeling spread from his fingertips without warning, and she realized belatedly that he'd just turned her intangible for a moment. With a bit of a shock, she felt her perfectly dry face. At the utter insanity of the moment, she actually let out a small laugh.

Danny's infectious grin lit up like a flare at that. "Now, that's better," he hummed.

"Nice party trick," she joked, trying to focus on not lapsing back into tears.

"Glad you liked it," he said, and then he suddenly let his arms fall away as if she'd burned him. "For whatever it's worth," he added, floating a step backwards, "_I_ think you do the 'friend' thing pretty well. You're the best one I've ever had at least."

She actually smiled at that. "Thanks, Danny. You're not so bad yourself," she added drolly.

He didn't even retort sarcastically for once. Instead, his head perked to the side as if struck by a sudden thought. His emerald eyes bored into her. "Hey, can I do something to cheer you up?"

"Probably not," she sighed, her grin slipping. She didn't think there was anything that could lift this dark mood.

He took her hand slyly, baring his teeth at her. "I wasn't asking for a suggestion, I was asking permission."

She quirked an eyebrow attentively. "Permission to what?"

She didn't have time to register anything before he had scooped her up into his arms unceremoniously and rocketed into the air. She let out a shriek instinctively, but they had already cleared her roof and were soaring well above the wealthy district of Amity Park.

"I did _not_ say yes!" she shouted over the sound of the crisp wind in her ears. Her black hair was whipping about her face. The faint smell of soon-to-be-rain was on the breeze. She clutched at the fluttering collar of Danny's suit, feeling the all-too-familiar tug of gravity pulling at her. The buildings and streets stretched and loomed endlessly, dizzyingly below them. Yes, he had been right on that first night in late September, so many months ago. Being carried was _so _much different than flying. The sight of her legs dangling freely against a mile's drop in his other arm was enough to make her heart stop. She wasn't even wearing shoes for Christ's sake!

And then, when she looked up at his bright face her heartbeat suddenly slammed back into full throttle.

"Where are we going?" she called out to him, and he seemed to have no trouble hearing her over the racing wind.

"You'll see," he assured her, and like a splash of cool water they turned intangible and soared up into a roiling dark cloud.

Sam had never been inside a cloud before, that much was for sure. As if in a dissociated dream, she watched the drifting moisture pass _through _their bodies – the only visible light was a small ball of churning ectoplasm that Danny was holding out with the arm supporting her legs. She felt like they were swimming through a murky oblivion in the depths of the sea, following the illusive light of an Angler fish.

When at last they emerged, Sam let out an audible gasp.

"Yeah, I know," Danny hummed.

Directly below them, the churning storm clouds really did look like the foggy depths of the drop off, deep beneath the waves, beyond some coral reef. The midnight lights of downtown Amity Park lit them quite faintly, so that it seemed there was some sort of Atlantis hidden far below. Only hinted by a dull yellow glow peaking up through the thick gray. The gray waves spread out perpetually, rolling out toward the horizon and spilling off the edge of the earth. At the horizon, a different world began and spread out above them, capsuling them in a Milky Way snow globe. Shimmering dust littered the black roof, the wide arm of the galaxy stretching out across infinity. Against the northern horizon the moon hung low, only the faintest sliver of light betraying that it was truly there.

Sam had never seen this many stars over Amity Park before in her life. She didn't think that anyone possibly could have.

Her jaw fell open, and for the first time in her life, she was well and truly speechless.

"I remember the first time I discovered it," Danny whispered, as though talking too loudly might disrupt the snow globe and send them reeling in a flurry of snowflakes. "That really cloudy nights cover up the light pollution from the city. Without all the lights, you get… all this. It was the first time I didn't feel angry that I'd become a ghost."

He gently let go of her legs and grabbed her hand tightly, and she felt the familiar weightlessness finally surge through her as he transferred energy, and all the gravity vanished from Sam's reality. She knew they were still well within the atmosphere, but they might as well have been in outer space.

Slowly she drifted down and leveled with him, but she couldn't quite bring herself to look at him. She was still soaking in the utopia.

He gently pulled on her hand and she finally glanced up at him, saw the way his eyes danced. It was clear he could tell how much this meant to her. "Wanna go for a walk?" he asked casually, and began to step forward onto the hazy non-surface on the misty cloud below them.

She felt absurd as she took a 'step' toward him. She couldn't feel gravity, she couldn't feel anything but his hand and the wind passing her by. But for some reason she took immense pleasure in it. For all she knew, she was the first human being to walk atop a cloud.

For some reason, the thought surfaced that Danny had been so adamant about not being seen in public together. For her safety, he would always say. _But who's gonna see us up here?_

And for some other reason, as they walked weightlessly along, following the galaxy's arm in the sky, Sam's eyes kept flitting from the mesmerizing view back towards Danny.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

x - x - x

When Sam thought she couldn't hate the GIW any more than she already did, she should have been prepared to eat her words.

As harsh and brittle January waned, it seemed there was never a ghost attack these days where they didn't show up to muck up everything. Even at the school, where they were never allowed to interfere before, there was a temporary squad on constant patrol. Basically they traipsed around fucking shit up majorly for Danny, who was trying his best to capture the stray ghosts without getting captured himself. It was becoming exceedingly difficult. The agency used to put an equal amount of effort into capturing all ghosts, but now it seemed that whenever Danny was there the other ghosts were completely forgotten. She desperately wondered _why_ they were suddenly so hell-bent on capturing him.

Sam watched from classroom windows, from the halls, from atop the tables in the cafeteria, she always stopped and watched whenever Danny showed up in her corner of the school to fight ghosts. Because he always did show up, even though he knew the GIW would be there, trying to capture him. He could just let the GIW do their jobs, but they never did it as thoroughly as Danny. Nobody could. So to keep hunting ghosts he voluntarily ran the risk of getting caught. And Sam would be lying if she said that possibility, however remote, didn't scare the hell out of her.

So, she watched. She couldn't help it. It was for the sake of her sanity, to know he was okay.

She didn't care that the other students considered her a Phantom worshipper now. That they thought she was crazy for following after the battling ghosts instead of running away from the action. Once Paulina Sanchez stopped her in a hallway and said "You can give up on that dream, Manson. Danny Phantom is _mine." _Sam had laughed heartily in her face before walking off.

Even Tucker started to poke fun, in his own brotherly way. Tucker wasn't blind, he could see straight through Sam's stammered excuses. It was clear Tucker thought she'd developed some star-struck crush on Phantom. Sam was beginning to think it would be time soon to tell Tucker that she had a secret second best friend. The guilt of keeping such a massive secret from him ate away at her sometimes, but in all truth was out of respect for Danny. He'd said he wanted to keep it a secret, so she'd kept it a secret. Even from Tucker.

It also ate away at her to see Danny coming into her room at all hours of the night, worked up into a frenzy over the latest blunders of the stupid GIW. As if the perils of ghost hunting weren't already enough, this added another level of danger to it. To Sam's dismay, he began to come to her with injuries more frequently. She became far more skilled at treating wounds than she ever would have liked.

Somewhere in the last few months their couple-nights-a-week thing had devolved into a nearly-every-night thing. It used to be just fine with her when he was too busy to drop in and visit some nights, but now with the GIW going after him with such vigor, she found that on the nights he didn't show that her anxiety hung so heavy that she couldn't focus on anything, let alone sleep. She couldn't help the pervasive haunting image of Danny trapped in one of their nets, of Danny strapped down on a table in some sterile underground lab. She would think of the frog she was forced to dissect in biology and feel bile rising in her throat.

One night Sam was laying on her stomach on her fluffy purple comforter, trying to concentrate on her English assignment, when Danny floated through the wall with murder in his eyes.

She could tell something very bad had happened.

She'd only seen him truly angry a handful of times. Mostly he was just frustrated, or annoyed, or exasperated. Seeing Danny Phantom in full anger mode was something that might have scared your average citizen. But it intrigued Sam. It reminded her how human Danny's emotions were, how much more human he seemed than ghostly. That he could touch on every part of the spectrum of emotion, and not just one level like so many other ghosts.

Tonight, his neon eyes were blazing in his head. They were always the most outspoken feature on him, but right now they could have outshone a lighthouse. Sam immediately sat up on his arrival, sensing his mood. He began by throwing his thermos heavily at the side of the bed, where it bounced and hit the ground and began rolling away slowly.

Sam moved to the edge of the bed, waiting for him to speak up. It was usually best to just let him rant about whatever the GIW had done that day, because after he did that he usually perked right up.

"They've gone too far," he muttered darkly, catching the rolling thermos with the toe of his boot.

"What did they do?" Sam asked, not sure she wanted to know the answer.

Danny didn't seem to have heard her. "I should have realized something was off.. never went this long without fighting him before. Nothing could ever keep him away, no matter how many times I tried... I should have _known_."

"Keep who away?"

Danny's fiery eyes met hers for a moment and he finally seemed to hear her. "The Box Ghost," he answered. "No matter how many times I throw him back in the Ghost Zone he always finds a way back in less than three days. I should have known. It's been weeks and _weeks _since I last fought him."

Sam dimly sought through her memories, and couldn't remember the last time she had seen the usually conspicuous ghost. "What happened to him?" she wondered.

"The Guys in White captured him," Danny growled.

Sam paled. Every terrifying image she'd ever had of the GIW experimenting on Danny was instantly juxtaposed on the Box Ghost. While he was annoying, he was always fairly innocent, a harmless threat. She didn't want to ask what they did, but Danny answered anyway.

"They only captured him to get at me." Sam could practically hear the self-loathing dripping in his voice, and she wanted to slap it out of him. "They just wanted information, about _me_."

"How do you know all this?" Sam asked cautiously.

"Because I found him," he said bluntly. "They let him go. Apparently they got what they wanted, or else didn't think they were going to get it. He was all but completely torn apart. He could barely form words, but he told me they took him… I just, I put him back in the Ghost Zone. He'll accumulate energy and heal much faster there than he would here...

"He didn't deserve this," Danny barked loudly, and Sam was grateful her parents were sleeping on the other side of the house. "No one deserves that, no matter what they've done. It's _cruel _and _unusual, _but of course the Constitution doesn't protect people who aren't considered _people._"

"Danny…" she wasn't sure what to say. How would you comfort someone about something like this?

"Those bastards," he growled, kicking the thermos away violently. "Seriously, who the hell do they think they are? Why do they get to make the rules?" His fists clenched as he paced her room and flickers of ectoplasm swirled around them. "How can they look at a creature that's so obviously sentient and classify it otherwise? I feel like I'm living under the fucking Nazi regime. This is my honest to God _worst nightmare_.

"They're never going to give up," he despaired, and stopped pacing momentarily, his eyes oddly glazed as he looked at Sam's window at the streetlamps below. "They're just going to keep coming after me until they have me. And who could blame them? I mean look at me! I am a _ghost_. All people ever see is a ghost. All I am is a ball of ectoplasm. I'm a _Class 8 Spectral Entity. _I'm _Target A-1. _I'm fucking nothing to them! Do you understand what's going to happen to me if they actually catch me?"

Sam blinked numbly at him, assuming it was a rhetorical question. She was watching his eyes and hands blaze trails of green against her dim room as he stalked back and forth. It was so strange watching him pace. He was always floating around, defying gravity just for the sake of it. It was almost scary to see him so grounded. With a start Sam realized what was so human about his emotions - he was feeling many of them at once. He wasn't just angry, he was confused and lost and he was _scared._

Suddenly, without warning, he sank to his knees. "I just don't know what to do anymore, Sam. I don't know if I can keep this up," he whispered. "Sometimes I wonder what _will _happen when they catch me." He fell into a hoarse whisper. "_When they cut me open_. If we'll all find out that I really am just a ball of ectoplasm, just a _Class 8 Spectral-_" his breath caught in his throat, and Sam had had enough, and she said so.

"Enough," she snapped sharply, causing him to abruptly look up. "Danny, come sit over here."

Something like annoyance flashed in his eyes, so she patted the space next to her gingerly, giving him a smile.

Warily, he floated up and settled next to her on the bed, giving her an odd look. "What?" he snapped back. God, he always got so testy if she interrupted his GIW ranting. She forced down any annoyance she felt at his tone.

"Danny," she said, more softly this time, and the green in his eyes softened a bit as well in response. Her heart fluttered inexplicably.

She picked up his hand from its place on the bed and tentatively removed the tough white glove. He was looking at her curiously but she focused on his hand.

"The first time you asked me to bandage you up," she said quietly, "I noticed it. I was wrapping this hand right here, and I saw that you had fingerprints."

Sam pulled his hand close to her face, and sure enough she could see the faint swirling spirals on the tips of his fingers. She flashed him a smile and saw that he was staring at her and not his hand. Her eyes flickered back downward, her thumb tracing along the thin scar crossing his callused palm.

"You have a little scar right here," she noted, "from the cut you got that day. And here.. there's bit of a callus here. Probably from all the manual labor you do," she joked. She looked up and saw that he was still looking at her like she was speaking a foreign language, and not at his hand like she'd hoped. Was he not grasping her point?

She let his arm rest on her lap but didn't let his hand out of her hands. She wasn't done with this metaphor yet.

"I was reading this book about the history of the paranormal in Amity Park, and they had this whole section on ghostly manifestations. You know, the way ghosts present themselves. It's supposed to be a subconscious choice. They fashion themselves after their obsession in a sense. But the one thing it said was that ghosts' appearances were skin deep. Like if you take off their hat, there's just going to be a glob of ectoplasm underneath. Or of you look at a cross-section of them, you won't find bones or anything you'd expect. Just ectoplasm. They only need to fake their outer appearances."

She could tell from Danny's expression that he was getting lost, so she came in for the homestretch. "What I'm saying, Danny, is that obviously people are _wrong about ghosts. _About everything they think they know about ghosts. Look at you, if you only went skin deep then I would have found pure ectoplasm under your glove. There wouldn't be scars here, hidden where nobody could see them. There wouldn't be _fingerprints."_

She stopped idly tracing the scar on his palm to steal a glance at him. He still wasn't looking at his hand. Just her. And he had the oddest expression on his face.

"Do you understand, Danny?" she whispered fiercely. "Don't _ever _say to me again that you're 'just a ball of ectoplasm' or I'm gonna have to kick your ass, alright? You're _so much_ more than that, and you know it."

She was suddenly struck by how distracting the glow of his eyes was, and for some reason she tried for a moment to envision his face without it. It was fairly impossible. The hazy candle-like glow coming off his skin blurred his features, almost like she was trying to look at him through thick fog. Without knowing why, she was hit with a desperate wish to see his face, without the glow and without the glowing eyes – she just wanted to know what he looked like, to truly see him.

"Sometimes I wish I could see your face more clearly," she breathed, though she didn't know if he would even know what she meant. Sam wasn't even sure _she_ knew what she meant.

All she knew was that now she was seeing his _eyes_ much more clearly.. in fact they were just a few inches from her, blinking curiously, and she could see the pattern in his irises, the way the ectoplasm rippled outward like liquid fire from his pupils. She was so paralyzed by them that she didn't actually realize what Danny was doing until he was already doing it.

The green light was suddenly gone; his eyes had closed. The fingers of his hand curled around hers, and his nose was gently nudging against the side of her nose.

He lingered there for a long moment, his forehead pressed lightly against hers, his messy hair spilling over and mixing with her hair, his frosty breath coating her whole face. She felt her own breath hitch and her lips part slightly in surprise as she finally, _finally _understood what he was doing. His lips pressed against her parted ones so softly that it might have been the brush of a snowflake for all she knew.

Everything stopped, including her thoughts.

Then the cold was gone, and she opened her eyes as her brain functions rebooted slowly.

His blazing half-lidded eyes were staring down at his hands, looking weary. "I'm sorry," he muttered.

That brought her speech back. "Why?" she managed to say.

He closed his eyes instead of looking at her. "I shouldn't have done that."

"Or… maybe you should do it again," she murmured, faintly wondering who on earth was saying those words.

He blinked at her, the smallest of smiles gracing his face, before reaching his free hand up and touching her softly on the rim of her jaw. She could actually feel his smile when he kissed her again, and this time she had the wits about her to actually kiss him back. It was like pressing a kiss into a solid slow breeze. Fingers snaked into her hair and his lips continually lifted and came back again delicately, tracing her mouth softly, like he was afraid he might shatter her.

When his thumb brushed her cheekbone she sighed, and he pulled back. "Sam," he whispered, and she was surprised to see that his frown was back, even more pronounced. "We can't do this."

Her heart, which had been racing, plunged to the bottom of her stomach. "What are you saying?"

His eyebrows scrunched, like he was in pain. "Sam… I'm a _ghost."_

_"So?" _Her fingers, which still clutched his ungloved hand, dug into his skin. It was solid and real, and didn't feel like a ghost to her.

Despite his misgivings his hand still hadn't left her face. He seemed to have forgotten that his thumb was still tracing the edge of her cheek. "What do you mean _so?" _he asked. "I'm _dead_, Sam. Doesn't that _bother _you?"

"No," she said flatly, and it was true. She couldn't believe what he was saying. She was clutching his hand and wrist so tightly she worried faintly that she was hurting him. "Do I need to show you your fingerprints again?" she asked sarcastically.

He looked dismayed. "This isn't about…"

"Yes it is," she interrupted. "This is about you thinking you're less than you are. Look at me, Danny. It isn't _about _what you are, don't you get it? It's about _who _you are! Maybe you're dead, but you're alive to me. You're sitting right here, I'm touching you, we're having a conversation. Isn't that enough?" When he didn't answer, she swallowed and said, "It's enough for me."

He sighed softly, and the defeated look on his face pained her more than she could say. So, without really thinking, she leaned forward and kissed him for a third time. She fully expected him to pull away. But he didn't. Instead he melted against her like a flood, and there was nothing delicate about it.

She wasn't aware of much else besides the feel of his breath on hers, a warm front and a cold front meeting like a storm, but dimly under it all she could feel her hands still clutching his hand and wrist tightly, felt the impossible faint throb of a steady beat against her fingertips, beating to a different rhythm than her own heart.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

x - x - x

It was a windy night in mid-February that Sam began to think that Danny was hiding something from her.

The air blew past her window sporadically, a low whistling sound escaping into the tiny crack. Other than that, the only other sound was the rustling of pages as Sam slowly turned them. She was leaning back against Danny's chest at the headboard of her bed, and her body rose and fell as he breathed. Glancing up at him, she saw that he was staring into space with a look of worried concentration.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked lightly, letting the open book rest against her chest.

Usually he snapped back into focus when she interrupted his space-outs, but he just kept staring, his eyebrows furrowed. "Nothing."

"Don't nothing me, what's wrong?"

He glanced down at her and his gaze softened, one hand reaching up to push her hair out of her face. "Nothing's wrong," he assured her. "I'm just a little worried is all."

"About what?"

"Just.. the Guys in White. The Box Ghost. I don't know."

"The Box Ghost? I thought you said he would heal up fine in the Ghost Zone."

His eyebrows creased further. "He will," he agreed. "I was just thinking about what he said when I found him there in the alley. He couldn't really say much…" His eyes glazed over, and Sam tried not to think about what the ghost had looked like when Danny found him. "But I heard the words "guys in white" and "captured." And he just kept repeating "I'm sorry" over and over… and.. the Box Ghost _never _apologizes."

He ran one hand raggedly through his hair, letting it fall into his face. "And the GIW haven't dogged me at all since I found the Box Ghost."

Sam's face lit up. No wonder Danny hadn't been complaining about them lately. They'd been leaving him alone? "Well that's great, isn't it?" she asked hopefully.

He grimaced at her. "I don't know. It isn't like them. Why would they stop suddenly, for no reason? It makes me think.. that the Box Ghost told them something. Something about me. I can't think of any other reason why… but it just doesn't make sense…"

A trickle of curiosity wormed its way into Sam's worry. "What could he have told them?" she asked quietly. What could any ghost possibly have to say to the GIW that could help them capture him? And what could a ghost have to say that could cause them to _stop _trying to capture him?

Danny looked away from her quickly. "I.. I don't know," answered. "I don't know what he could have said. But I feel like he _did _say something. I feel like I'm in the eye of the storm, and as soon as the GIW get back on my tail again I'm going to have a lot to deal with."

Sam watched him curiously, and couldn't help the nagging feeling that Danny _did _have some idea what the ghost could have said to them. But.. why wouldn't he tell her?

"Hey," she said softly, setting her book aside. "Stop worrying so much. You're going to give yourself worry wrinkles," she told him, crinkling her nose as if the thought repulsed her.

He rolled his eyes at her. "Ghosts don't wrinkle, stupid."

"Well then you're going to give _me _wrinkles, for making _me _worry so much."

"Aw, you worry about me? That's cute," he said, overloading his tone with baby-voice and rubbing his face into her hair.

"Of course I worry, idiot," she grumbled, trying to pull away. He was making her hair all frizzy. "Stop it!" she commanded, but he wrapped his arms around her waist when she tried to sit up.

"Don't wanna," he mumbled, pressing a kiss onto the top of her head.

"God it's like I'm dating a preschooler," she grumbled, crossing her arms.

He froze at that. "_Are _we dating?" he said into her hair.

Sam's brain screeched to a halt, and she found herself rapidly back-pedaling.

Neither of them had spoken a word to the other about the change that had happened in their relationship since that night in January. It just happened.. and kept happening. Words turned to kisses so naturally that they both seemed unwilling to break the spell by trying to give what they had a name. They just enjoyed it.

But Sam had just broken it, by accident. And now his words hung in the air: _Are _we dating? ….Could she even _date _a ghost?

"I…" Words failed her. "I dunno.. Are we?"

She pulled away and looked at him uncertainly, and to her surprise he broke into laughter.

"I guess we are," he hummed, pulling her back against his chest. "I wonder what your _parents_ would say," he trilled wickedly.

Sam blanched at the thought. "I think they would send me to military school. Or something," she shuddered.

"Hmm," was all he said. His hand traced the side of her arm methodically. She shivered, though it wasn't because she was cold.

After a few moments of comfortable silence, Danny began to laugh again.

"What?" she asked "What's so funny?"

He caught his breath. "It's just so ironic," he managed. "Don't you know what day it is today?"

"Ummm.. Monday?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. She was pretty sure it was Monday.

He snickered. "Yeah, it is Monday," he admitted, and he abruptly turned intangible.

She fell through his body with a surprised gasp and landed flat against the bedspread. "What's so special about Monday?" she asked when he materialized directly above her, grinning like a maniac.

"Oh nothing," he mumbled, floating lazily closer. He pressed a kiss onto her forehead, her nose, her cheek. She turned her head to catch his lips but he dodged and pressed one against her chin instead. His hands reached down and held her head still while he pressed his lips against her cheek and then her neck, laughing at her failing attempts to kiss him back.

"Hold still," she told him, trying again to kiss him. But he dodged again and kissed the crook in her clavicle, and once just at the very corner of her mouth, just to antagonize her.

That did it. She reached both hands up behind his head and didn't let him escape, forcing him to actually kiss her. He laughed into the kiss, and somehow she felt that he had won the game instead of her.

So she evened the playing field, wrapping her arms up around his waist and pulling him abruptly out of the air.

She felt his momentary shock as the weight of his body fell against her, and knew that she was the winner this time.

It had never once bothered her when the thought arose that she was kissing a ghost. She'd been serious in what she said to Danny. She didn't care what he was. He was there and he was real, and that was all that mattered. The only thoughts that weakened her were the ones that whispered '_you can't really have him.'_ The ones that reminded her that whatever they had couldn't last forever, because Danny could never grow old with her. Not that she _wanted _that… At least she could keep telling herself that.

It was just as hard as ever to think of Danny as actually, physically, dead. It was almost impossible. He was alive, he _felt _alive, he made _her _feel alive.

And sometimes, when she was pressed against his chest, or her fingers on his wrist, she could swear she felt the faintest hint of a heartbeat. Was she kidding herself? Did she so desperately want him to be alive that she was hearing her own heartbeat echoing in her ear and thinking it was in Danny's chest?

She sensed that he was weightless still, that he was drifting upward subtly, so she pulled against him fiercely, crushing him against her. She had no idea where all this ferocity came from. Something like a whine escaped from his lips into their kiss, and her heart flittered madly. The weightlessness went out of him then and his knees tucked themselves against her, one on her outer thigh and one resting between them.

Maybe it was the beating of her own heart she felt when his chest pressed against hers, but she really didn't think so. She wanted desperately to ask, but what would she ever say? "_Does your heart beat?" _Ghosts weren't _supposed _to have heartbeats. What if she was wrong, and she crushed his feelings?

She traced the seams running along the shirt of his black jumpsuit, tucked her thumbs into the loops holding up his segmented white belt. When she opened her eyes she saw that adorable green glow on his cheeks where the ectoplasm had rushed. _Do ghosts blush? _she wondered absently. _This one does._

His eyelids opened a crack and he saw she was looking at him. He smiled sneakily and moved his kisses down to her neck again, and this time she let him win. His breath raised goosebumps on her skin, though she was sure they'd be there whether or not his breath was like fog. As he moved along the base of her neck down to the dipping hem of her shirt, her knees bent reactively, her hands pulling him closer even though he couldn't get any closer.

As her legs bent up, pushing against his body, she felt something that truly surprised her, and her face flushed madly in response. She glanced down at Danny but his gaze was trained on her pale skin, the glow on his cheeks even more pronounced than before.

She didn't mention it.

He looked highly embarrassed, and like he was about to pull away, so she wrapped her arms around him, keeping him there.

It must have been an hour before she finally stopped kissing him, and they lay pressed against each other for a long while, listening to the wind outside.

"I have to go," he whispered softly into the dark room. She was laying face down on his chest, her ear pressed against his heart. She could hear it, she knew she could. It was there, just below the surface. It was slow and faint, but it was _there._

"Do you have to?" she murmured sleepily. She was so comfortable…

He chuckled. "I can't stay here all night."

"Why? You have… someplace.. important to be?" she mumbled.

He trailed the tips of his fingers across her back. "I could stay here till you fall asleep, if you want."

"I want," she mumbled.

"Alright. Go to sleep then, sleepy."

"Mmm. Night.. Danny.."

"Night Sammy. Oh… and happy Valentine's Day."

She fell asleep and dreamt that she was a glowing green bird, skirting between the clouds and the stars.

When she woke up in the morning he was gone.

* * *

Yeah, definitely some _heavy_ adult themes in this chapter. Before anyone says anything, I'll remind you that I _did _rate this "T." And also they are both seniors already and therefore 17-18 years old.. so I'm being realistic, okay. This is also why I use profanity. I am way into realism. I don't like to shy away from adult content that I think adds a healthy layer to the story.

So just enjoy the story and relax your buns. :)


	9. Chapter 9

**Important Author's Note**: By now I've noticed some people mention that** A)** Danny seems a bit too perfect, and **B)** Sam is a bit too mean to Danny (Fenton).

I think if you think that then you may have missed my point in these characters. Try to think about everything that's happened in the three years since The Accident in this story. Danny _isn't_ perfect in this fic. He royally screwed up, in not telling anyone about his accident in the first place and forcing away his friends in a misguided attempt to keep them safe.

The reason Sam is 'mean' to Danny Fenton is because she (and everyone else) tried reeeaaaally hard for a really long time to help him and be there for him, but he just pushed everyone away. No one knew why. She was really hurt by that, and that's why she has hard feelings towards him. She doesn't understand why he would do that. She's more confused and hurt than angry, really, but in a character like Sam that manifests as lashing out, hence her outburst at Danny F in Chapter Five.

Okay I'm done with this explanation now haha :)

* * *

**Chapter Nine**

x - x - x

For a second time she found herself reluctantly on the Fentons' doorstep, waiting anxiously for someone to answer, hoping it wasn't _him._

Tangible relief washed over her when it was Jack who answered the door, holding a half-constructed ectogun in one hand.

He blinked down at her in surprise for a moment, then burst into a wide smile and gripped her in a massive bear hug. "Sammy!" he yelled ecstatically. "What are you doing here?"

She smiled despite herself at the warm welcome. "I'm here to see Mrs. Fenton, actually," she told him as he ushered her inside. Truthfully Jack could answer her questions as easily as Maddie could, but Maddie was always the more level-headed and objective of the two. So she really wanted to talk to Maddie.

"Oh," he said, and she caught a hint of disappointment. She bit her lip, knowing that he'd been hoping she was here to see Danny Fenton. "I'll go get her from the lab," he assured her. "Make yourself comfortable. There's cookies on the counter if you want one!" he added as he bustled down the stairs.

Sam sat with her hands folded at the counter, and hoped desperately that their son wasn't home.

Maddie came up a few minutes later, holding a wrench in her hand. "Hi honey," she said sweetly. "To what do I owe this surprise?"

Sam chewed on her lip, wondering where on earth to begin. "I just wanted to talk," she began slowly. "I had some questions, and I didn't know who else to ask."

Maddie looked at her curiously and took a seat beside her on the next stool. "About what? Oh, did Jack tell you we have cookies?" She picked one up and offered it to Sam, but she shook her head politely. Maddie shrugged and set it back down on the plate.

"About.. ghosts," Sam admitted, gauging Maddie's reaction.

"Oh?" she said. A look of strange pride came over her, and Sam knew she was feeling triumphant that she'd passed on her interests in ghosts to somebody. "What can I tell you about them?"

"Well…" Here came the tricky part. "I want to know your personal theory. On why they started showing up all at once three years ago." _Danny died three years ago._

Maddie raised her eyebrows. "Well… no one knows for sure. One thing we know is that it began happening in the late fall of that year, just after we succeeded in creating our Ghost Portal. We thought at first that maybe they were actually escaping from our portal. Some of them were… but most of them weren't. We weren't sure _how _they were getting in. There were more natural portals around than there had ever been before. It still mystifies us, although the Guys in White seem to think our portal is the root of the problem." She said 'Guys in White' like it was a swear word.

Sam nodded, though she was disappointed that Maddie didn't have a clear idea why it started happening. She felt for some reason that it all related back to Danny, who'd started showing up right when the rest of them did. But he was the only one that had actually died right at that time.

"Okay… next question," Sam continued. "How much do we know about the anatomy of ghosts?" she asked tentatively.

"Anatomy?" Maddie asked.

Sam nodded, feeling a blush rise unbidden to her cheeks at the word 'anatomy,' thinking of why exactly she was asking the question. Of the curiosity she'd felt when Danny was pressed hard against her when they were kissing. She was sure she'd felt that happen, but she was wondering _how _it had happened. She reminded herself that _Maddie _didn't know why, and she tried to stifle her slight embarrassment.

"Well," Maddie began, "ghosts don't really have anatomy, at least not in the same sense that people do. The don't have systems like people do, nervous systems, or circulatory or skeletal systems.. or any of that. When they feel pain it's an auto-response, fabricated by their imprinted memories. If you were to cut one in half, sorry for the crude example, but if you did that then you'd see they were just pure ectoplasm on the inside."

Sam nodded her head numbly. Maddie was just spewing the same nonsense from the books Sam had already read. It was dead wrong. She had _seen _Danny feel pain and knew it was real. She'd felt the bones under his skin, the way his ribs fit against each other. How could they not be real?

"So.. a ghost wouldn't have any bones?" she asked. "They wouldn't have a heartbeat or pumping blood? Or say.. fingerprints?" _They wouldn't be able to get hard? _she added mentally, her blush deepening.

Maddie laughed. "Of course not. Ghosts don't _need _any of those things." She looked at Sam curiously, as if she had just asked if the color of the sky was red.

"Okay," Sam conceded. This was only succeeding in making her more confused than before. "One more question."

"Go ahead," she smiled.

"What are your thoughts on Danny Phantom?"

She expected Maddie to tell her exactly how evil he was, what a menace he was to the town. After all she'd seen Jack and Maddie chasing him down time after time, shouting obscenities at him, trying to capture him themselves. But to her surprise, Maddie just frowned.

"That's a good question," she said quietly. "The truth is, I don't know what to think anymore."

"…What do you mean?"

"We used to think of him like we think of all the other ghosts, of course. But lately I've been rather confused."

"Why?"

Maddie was playing absently with the wrench in her hands. "Well, a while back we actually managed to capture Phantom briefly."

Sam's breath caught in her throat. _Danny never told me that!_

"He escaped fairly quickly, but we did manage to get an ectoplasm sample from him for the first time."

Sam listened numbly.

"I was studying it under the microscope, and it wasn't behaving like any other ectoplasm I'd ever seen. It was coalescing in patterns, similar to cellular structures. It was beyond baffling. It was the biggest discovery we'd seen since our portal became operational. I wanted to break it down to a baser level, to examine the structures themselves. So I put it under our destabilizer, which is supposed to blast it with a range of frequencies until it finds the correct frequency that breaks down the matter. There's a magic number – it's different for all types of ectoplasm. But.. when it hit the right frequency, instead of breaking down, it turned red."

Sam's eyebrows raised and Maddie shrugged.

"I know, it's strange. I was completely baffled. But when I put it back under the microscope, I knew what I was looking at. It was _blood."_

_"Blood?" _Sam repeated incredulously.

"Yes," she said flatly. "I don't understand…" Her lips pressed into a thin line. "Phantom is a complete anomaly. I'd always been suspicious of his nature, because he never really followed the behavioral patterns of other ghosts. But this just raised more questions than it answered. I don't know what's different about him, but something is. Which is why we've stopped hunting him," she added sadly. "I'll not hunt something that I'm not even sure is a ghost."

"That's… incredibly fascinating," Sam forced herself to say.

"Yes, it really is," Maddie agreed. "But it's too bad that I can't study the sample further."

"Wait, why not?"

Maddie's absent expression turned into a harsh glare. "Because that stupid government agency came in and confiscated all our research weeks and weeks ago."

Sam's heart tried to leap out of her throat. "Like.. how many weeks ago?" she squeaked.

"December," she replied, and Sam felt an odd weight in her chest.

_December was when the GIW captured the Box Ghost. _What did that have to do with anything? She couldn't shake the pervasive feeling that it had everything to do with it_. _They captured him because they wanted information about Danny. They had just gotten _this_ information about Danny… But they needed more? She could practically hear the Box Ghost repeating _"I'm sorry," _again and again to Danny in a dark alley. The Box Ghost had told them what they wanted to know.. Had told them _what _exactly?_  
_

"That agency is corrupt and useless," Maddie fumed, "and now they stole years of our research! The only thing they didn't have a warrant to take was our actual equipment. Although they're trying to get that now too."

"They are?"

"Yes, they're applying for a warrant to get their hands on all our equipment, including our Ghost Portal, in the name of trying to stymy the ghost attacks. They still believe our portal is the cause of it, even though we've proved that the majority of the attacks are coming from other naturally occurring portals in the area. They want to completely shut us down," Maddie breathed, her shoulders hunched over.

Sam's other thoughts immediately stopped, as she realized what Maddie was saying. If the GIW succeeded in that they would be ruining the business that Maddie and Jack had built from the ground up, that they had built their entire lives around. Their whole life's work.

"I'm so sorry," Sam murmured, and rested her hand on Maddie's hand.

Maddie smiled warmly at her. "Don't worry, Sam. It'll be fine. We're always fine. Now then, did you have any other questions about ghosts?" she added amusedly.

"No, I suppose not," she admitted, but she suddenly felt reluctant to leave.

"Well, I'm glad you came by to talk with me. You know you're always welcome here, if you have any more questions about ghosts. Or if you ever need anything. You know we love you, Sammy. But.. I simply won't let you leave until you eat a cookie," she told her, pointing to the chocolate chip covered cookie pile in the center of the counter.

Sam laughed, ready to refuse her again politely. "Are they vegan?" she joked, knowing full well that ninety-nine percent of cookie recipes included eggs.

"Oh Sam, you know we always make a couple of them vegan," she replied quietly, turning the plate around to show that on the other side there were three of them stacked, set off to the side. "These are the ones without eggs."

Sam picked one up numbly, and fought the sudden urge to run far away.

* * *

God why is the end of this chapter so depressing? I got so sad while writing this. I think it's because my best friend's family pseudo-adopted me into their lives because my fam is psycho. So yeah how Sam feels about Maddie is how I feel about my friend's mom, which is why I was SO SAD while writing these Maddie chapters.

Just thought you'd like to know. Lol.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

x - x - x

"You're awfully quiet tonight," Danny observed, his upside-down face popping downward between hers and her math worksheet on the desktop.

"Well, I'm doing my homework," she rebutted, nudging his face out of the way with her pencil. The truth was she had barely gotten to problem six and she'd been working on it for an hour. Calculus was impossible when you were as distracted as she was.

He floated down and sat on the desk next to her paper, flicking the corner of the worksheet absently. "Yeah but usually you complain about your homework the whole way through, or else talk about other stuff. You know you've barely said three words to me since I got here?"

She watched his wrist as he played with her paper. Imagined that she could hear a faint pulse in thick veins beneath the skin.

She huffed and slid her worksheet out of his reach, and circled her final answer for problem number six. "I'm just distracted," she admitted honestly.

"By my radiant beauty?" he guessed, beaming sardonically.

She rolled her eyes and read problem seven over for a third time, still having failed to grasp what it was asking her to do.

"Hey seriously Sam, what's eating at you?" he added, the sarcasm gone. "Did I do something?"

"No," she sighed, though it wasn't quite true. Problem seven was still eluding her and she had just realized that she did the first three problems completely incorrectly, so she slapped her pencil down in annoyance. "Can I ask you something?" she said suddenly.

"Uh.. yeah. Anything."

"Do you know why the ghosts all began showing up at once three years ago?"

She looked up from her paper and saw that his expression had suddenly become wary. A dozen suspicions were immediately confirmed.

"Yeah… I know."

"Are you going to tell me?" she asked, feeling a little hurt. Lied to. She had mentioned curiosity about this topic many times to him in the past, and he'd never given her an inkling that he knew the cause of the phenomenon.

He sighed, twiddling his thumbs in his lap. "Yeah I'll tell you. At first I didn't know why. I thought it was the Ghost Portal that uh.. that the Fentons opened up. But it was obvious all the ghosts weren't escaping from it. You remember what I told you about Frostbite and the Far Frozen, right?"

"Right.." she said slowly, trying to follow his train of thought.

"Well his people have this universal map. They call it the Infi-map. It tracks all the portals between the Ghost Zone and our world. They keep tabs on all of them. So I went to talk to him, to try to understand how all these ghosts were getting in so suddenly, why it was focused in Amity Park of all places.

He told me that when the Fentons opened up a stable portal, the presence of that constant pathway stabilized all the ambient fleeting paths in the area. You know Amity Park has always been known for ghost sightings. Apparently it's because there have always been naturally occurring portals in this area. They come and go. But with a permanent stable portal here, the other ones began to stabilize too, concentrating and appearing more frequently." He laughed. "Kinda sucks doesn't it?"

Sam nodded dazedly, trying to take in all this new info. "So the Guys in White were actually right then," she murmured ponderously. The Fentons' portal _was _the root of the problem.

"What? What are you talking about?"

"I was talking to Maddie Fenton last week. She said the Guys in White thought their portal was causing the increase in ghost attacks. So I guess they were actually right for once. And I guess we won't be having them for much longer then, because Maddie said they were trying to get a warrant to shut down the portal."

To her surprise, Danny sighed wearily. "Yeah, I know."

"Wait, you _know?"_

"Yeah, they've been trying to get one for a while. I'd stop them if I could, but it's not something you can fight with your fists."

"Why would you want to stop them?"

He ran one hand raggedly through his hair. "When I found all this out, my immediate reaction was wanting to shut down the portal too. But Frostbite explained that it wouldn't stop the attacks. Rather, it would massively destabilize the concentrated energy that surrounds Amity Park now. Basically, it wouldn't get rid of the natural portals. That's impossible. Physics, you know. 'Energy can be neither created nor destroyed.' Shutting down the thing that was stabilizing them would just scatter them. Imagine.. imagine that Amity Park is like a shaken-up soda can, and the portals are the bubbles. Deactivating the Fentons' portal would be like popping open the can.

So Amity Park would benefit, but the surrounding county, the state.. it would be a nightmare. Frostbite showed me a simulation of what the map might look like if the portal was suddenly deactivated after all this time. It looked like someone flicked green paint at the map, that's how scattered the portals were across the country."

"Wow… just, wow." She didn't know what to say. Why in god's name had he never told her any of this before? She didn't have a single secret from Danny, and suddenly it felt like there was this whole other life under his surface that she knew nothing about.

A dozen secondary questions, a dozen suspicions swirled around, but the one that tumbled from her mouth was the last one she was expecting. "Does this portal stuff.. does it have something to do with your death, Danny?"

He blinked at her, clearly taken aback. "Why would you think that?"

"Only for a million reasons. Like why would you never mention this to me? What possible reason could there have been? The only thing you've ever kept from me was information about your death," or so she used to think, "and you showed up exactly when all these other ghosts did, but you're the only one whose actual death was right then. There's some connection I'm missing, I know it. And then you refuse to tell me what your name was before you died, and nobody remotely like you died here before you showed up. But why would your obsession be Amity Park if you didn't even live here? I've always tried to respect your right to not talk about your death, but I just have so many questions about you and I can't help but think you're hiding something from me."

She examined his hurt expression. Imagined she could hear his heartbeat quicken under the accusation.

"Where is all this coming from?" he asked, trying to keep the pain from his voice. "Sam.. I'm not-"

"No. Don't try to tell me you're not. I _know _you're hiding something." If she'd been uncertain before, she wasn't now.

She vividly imagined the green ectoplasm coursing through him, distantly heard a high frequency disrupting the glowing matter, breaking it down, into red flowing blood.

"Sam, please," he begged quietly, hanging his head. "I can't. I can't tell you. I'm sorry."

"Can't tell me _what_?" she seethed, shoving her computer chair back from the desk, rising to her feet. "Can't tell me what the Box Ghost might have told the Guys in White? Can't tell me what Maddie Fenton found out when she studied the sample of your ectoplasm?"

His eyes widened when she mentioned Maddie, his hands gripping the edge of the desk forcefully. "What does that have to do with-"

"It has _everything _to do with it!" Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides. She hadn't realized until now how much it hurt. Now that it was confirmed that Danny was keeping something from her, it was so much more painful than the what-ifs.

She heard Maddie's confused voice echoing in her ears. "_I'll not hunt something that I'm not even sure is a ghost."_

Her voice shook as she tried to remain calm. "I thought I was imagining it but I _knew _I felt your heart beating. I felt it!" _Ghosts don't have hearts. _"And your ectoplasm.. when Maddie studied it, it broke down into _blood."_ He looked like he wanted to sink through her floor and disappear.

"_Are _you even a ghost, Danny?" she heard herself whispering, searching his face for an answer. His torn expression. Didn't he know by now that she didn't care what he was? She just wanted to _know. _Didn't he trust her?

He took a hesitant step forward, raising his hand and then dropping it again dejectedly. "Sam, I… I don't know what to say."

"You can start by _telling me the truth."_

His green eyes fizzled softly, like dying coals. "I _am _a ghost," he said quietly. "But you're right. There is something different about me, something that sets me apart from the other ghosts. But I just can't tell you what it is."

"And why not?" she replied hotly. "Don't you trust me?"

"Of course I trust you," he answered, wounded. "I haven't kept it a secret for _my _safety. It's for _your _safety, Sam. Please, you have to believe me."

"Why should I?" she snapped. "Apparently there's a whole slew of secrets I didn't even know you had. How does keeping your secrets keep me safe?"

"It just does. If you knew.. everything would be different. I can't explain why, but it would. I gave up everything when I became what I am, to protect the people I cared about. Sparking this friendship with you.. it was so selfish of me. When you gave me the taste of having a friend again I couldn't let it go, not for a second time. I should have never done it, but I couldn't _help _myself Sam. But you have to understand. Telling you.. telling you my secret would be like undoing everything, undoing all the careful precautions I took when I died."

_You regret becoming friends with me?_

"_You should have never done it_?" she repeated, barely above a whisper. "You regret it?"

His head shook vigorously. "No, it's not _like _that Sam. I don't regret it, how could I ever regret it?" He closed the gap between them and his hand found its way into her hair. She resisted the urge to pull away. "But it was _selfish _of me, don't you get it? You'd be so much better off having never met me."

"How could you say that? Do you really think that? That protecting me is more important than _knowing _me?"

Danny looked down at her sadly, like the answer was completely obvious. "Protecting you is more important than _anything _to me," he murmured, and pressed a kiss against her temple.

"Don't," she whispered hoarsely. "I can't.. I'm not okay with this. I'm not okay with not knowing."

He pulled back, his face carefully blank.

"You're important to me too, you idiot. I can't.. I can't go through losing a best friend again. I can't do it," her voice broke at the end.

"Hey, you aren't going to lose me," he assured her, cradling her face in his wide hands.

She failed to find any reassurance in his confident expression. "But whatever you're hiding from me… the Guys in White know. I'm scared Danny, I'm scared that they're going to capture you. Can you tell me for sure that they won't?" She dared him to deny it.

His thumb brushed across her cheek absently. "No," he admitted quietly. "I think the Box Ghost told them what I am."

"And will it help them catch you?" she implored desperately.

"It might."

She squeezed her eyes closed, as if it might shut out the realization.

"Sam." His voice was directly in her ear, his breath tickling through her hair. His arms wrapped solidly across her back, pulling her in close. "It'll be okay."

Her hands pressed against his chest, half-heartedly pushing him away. "No, it won't be," she said, certain that it was true. She couldn't see how it would be okay. "Is this really a heartbeat?" she whispered, her ear pressed against the loose fabric over his chest.

"…Yes," he murmured into her hair.

"And you expect me to just not wonder how?" She pushed back forcefully, separating herself from him.

"Sam, _please," _he implored, reaching for her shoulders, but she stepped back.

"No. You need to decide, Danny. You think you're protecting me but I don't _want _to be protected anymore. It should be _my _choice, not yours! I don't want secrets. I just want.. I want you. All of you, without any reservations." Her cheeks flushed and her fierce glare dropped to the carpet. "So choose. You can tell me the truth and stay, or you can choose 'protecting' me and just go away."

She didn't think it would even be a choice. The answer to her was clear. But she must have underestimated how severe his hero complex was.

"Alright," he said quietly. "I get it. I wish I didn't have to keep it a secret from you, Sam, I really do."

"So, that's really what you choose?" She felt vaguely guilty for giving him the ultimatum, but she never really thought he would pick the wrong choice. Her gut churned painfully. "Fine then. _Fine."_

"Sam-" he reached for her again but she shoved his arms away.

"_No. _Don't bother. Just.. just leave me alone." She buried her face in her hands so she wouldn't have to look at him anymore.

As always he moved as silently as a shadow, but she felt it when he left. It was as if someone had closed a window against a cold draft.

She opened her eyes slowly into the empty room, blinking away tears. She wasn't sure if she was angrier at him or at herself. Part of her just wanted him to come back, so she could apologize for what she'd said. Part of her couldn't bear the thought of looking at him when it seemed there was someone else just beneath his surface that she didn't even know.

Moving numbly to the window, she opened it and peered down along the street, up and around the quiet dark night. He was gone.

One short orange candle flickered faintly inside on her windowsill. Drippings of wax were melting down the sides, pooling into the rainbow array of wax puddles littering the entire sill. Dozens of other candle stubs were scattered there, having been burnt down to the bottom, stuck to each other and to the surface, the memories of a hundred hazy nights, the echoes of a hundred invitations she'd sent out to a wandering friend.

Hurt and confusion burned in her heart and she blew out the orange candle, leaving her window dark for the first night in months.


End file.
